Chrissy Cunningham (
queenofhawkinshigh) wrote2022-07-02 08:36 pm
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in that pink dress, they're gonna crucify me
She shouldn't be here. Going into Eddie Munson's trailer to buy drugs is just about the last thing a girl like her should be doing, and Chrissy knows it. That isn't, though, what has her trembling and looking over her shoulder, teeth pressing to her lower lip as they step inside. For anyone to see her now would be the least of her problems, and that's saying something. She can only imagine how they'd react — Jason, her parents, everyone at school. The golden girl, not so golden anymore, all of the effort she's put into not letting anyone see that she's never been that — not golden, just gilded, a perfect surface covering anything but — for naught.
It's worth it, completely, if it clears her head for even just a little while, if it lets her catch her breath. Besides, while he's little more than a stranger, she got the foolish sense, earlier in the woods, that he wasn't looking at that thin gold varnish, but at her, the first person who's actually seen her and not just either what she wants them to see or all her shortcomings in a long time. Just the thought of it makes her feel even crazier than she already does, and she wouldn't have the first idea how to say so without sounding unbelievably stupid, but it makes it easier to follow him inside, arms wrapped around herself and fingers toying absently with the sleeves of her sweater as she looks around.
"Sorry for the mess. Maid took the week off," Eddie says, wry, and Chrissy would smile, offer a reassurance or joke in turn, if her nerves weren't so shot. She wants what she came here for. Anything else can wait.
"You, um... You live here alone?" she asks instead. She doesn't know anything about him, she realizes, except what everyone knows. He's been a senior for years, he sells drugs, he's supposedly a freak. He plays guitar, she knows that now, too. And he's warm, something that makes her feel a little guilty for being so rushed as he searches for the drugs she came here for.
"With my uncle," he answers, moving further into the trailer. "But, uh, he works nights at the plant, bringing home the big bucks."
Heart racing, she turns toward him. "How long does it take?" she asks abruptly. She's never done anything stronger than an ibuprofen or an antibiotic before. This is entirely uncharted territory, and it's terrifying, if not as much so as living with what's in her head. "The Special K. How long to kick in?"
"Oh, uh, well, it depends if you snort it or not," Eddie tells her, with an ease that makes her wonder just how much experience he has here. "If you do, then, uh, yeah. It'll kick in pretty quick."
She nods along. Quick is what she wants. When Eddie looks in yet another little container and says "Oh, shit," though, she feels a fresh burst of nerves. "You're sure you have it?"
"No, no, no, I got it," he assures her quickly. "Uh, somewhere." Without another word, he holds up a hand and runs into the back, where she can only assume his room is, leaving her standing in what amounts for the trailer's living room. It's not such a bad place, really. Run down and lived in, sure, but comfortable —
Or it would be, if the clock weren't beginning to chime.
Gasping, Chrissy turns toward the window, looking out at the still, dark night. There's nothing there, nowhere the ticking sound could be coming from except her own mind. She pulls the curtains shut quickly, turning in the direction of the hallway again. "Eddie?" she calls, trying not to sound so frantic, mostly failing. "Did you find it? Eddie?"
There's no answer. She definitely shouldn't be walking back to Eddie's bedroom, but she's desperate and she needs this now.
She calls his name again, but when she turns into the room, hand against the door frame, he isn't there. Her mother is, sitting at her sewing machine, altering her cheer uniform. "Mom?"
"Just loosening this up for you, sweetheart," her mother says, as sweetly cruel as ever. "You're going to look absolutely beautiful."
Her voice changes, deepens, distorts. Chrissy doesn't have a chance to react before her mother turns, and her face is — wrong, somehow, smile pulled too tight, eyes gone white. With a sharp breath, she pulls the door shut, anything to put distance between them, and she's not at Eddie's, she's at home. How could she be at home?
"Chrissy!" comes her mother's voice from behind her, still with that strange, distorted echo, the door giving way. Instinctively, Chrissy yanks it shut again, fighting as best she can, unable to help letting out a shriek. "Chrissy, open the door! Let go! Let go!" She doesn't want to let go, but she can't hold on, and she's taking off down the hall as soon as the door flies open, not wanting to see what's behind it. Bolting down the stairs, she pauses for just a moment, taking stock of her surroundings. There's a light in the den. Maybe her father will help her. Maybe he needs help.
"Dad!" she calls, taking off again, running to him. "Dad! Dad?"
He turns toward her. His eyes and mouth are sewn up. She screams again, this time loud and long and shrill, until the lights start flickering, and she knows she's caught. There are footsteps on the stairs that definitely don't belong to her mother, a deep voice, one that's become familiar by now, saying her name. She runs anyway, because it's all she can do, away from her struggling father, into the dining room, where she takes in the sight of food on the table — rotted, covered with flies and spiders — before she keeps going, trying to get to the front door, her best possible means of escape.
Throwing the double doors open, she finds, instead of a way out, wooden boards, keeping her trapped in here. "No!" she says, pounding against the planks, throwing her body against them. "Help, help! Somebody help me!"
No one comes. No one hears her. No one's ever heard her.
"Chrissy," the deep voice says again, rounding the corner now. There's nowhere left for her to go, nothing for her to do but cry as the horrible creature encroaches on her, shrinking back like it will make any kind of difference. "Don't cry, Chrissy," he says, lifting one hand, a long, wet, spindly finger brushing a tear off her cheek. "It's time for your suffering to end."
He says it almost like it's a good thing, like he means to be compassionate, like he hasn't been haunting her for days and chasing her through her own home. And she did want that, didn't she? Not to hurt anymore, the way she's hurt for so long. She just didn't want it like this, the thought just barely crossing her mind before he extends his hand, holding it up over her face, snapping her head back.
Everything hurts, her mind and body both, and then everything goes dark. Somewhere, Chrissy crumples, a cheerleading uniform-clad heap on the ground.
It's worth it, completely, if it clears her head for even just a little while, if it lets her catch her breath. Besides, while he's little more than a stranger, she got the foolish sense, earlier in the woods, that he wasn't looking at that thin gold varnish, but at her, the first person who's actually seen her and not just either what she wants them to see or all her shortcomings in a long time. Just the thought of it makes her feel even crazier than she already does, and she wouldn't have the first idea how to say so without sounding unbelievably stupid, but it makes it easier to follow him inside, arms wrapped around herself and fingers toying absently with the sleeves of her sweater as she looks around.
"Sorry for the mess. Maid took the week off," Eddie says, wry, and Chrissy would smile, offer a reassurance or joke in turn, if her nerves weren't so shot. She wants what she came here for. Anything else can wait.
"You, um... You live here alone?" she asks instead. She doesn't know anything about him, she realizes, except what everyone knows. He's been a senior for years, he sells drugs, he's supposedly a freak. He plays guitar, she knows that now, too. And he's warm, something that makes her feel a little guilty for being so rushed as he searches for the drugs she came here for.
"With my uncle," he answers, moving further into the trailer. "But, uh, he works nights at the plant, bringing home the big bucks."
Heart racing, she turns toward him. "How long does it take?" she asks abruptly. She's never done anything stronger than an ibuprofen or an antibiotic before. This is entirely uncharted territory, and it's terrifying, if not as much so as living with what's in her head. "The Special K. How long to kick in?"
"Oh, uh, well, it depends if you snort it or not," Eddie tells her, with an ease that makes her wonder just how much experience he has here. "If you do, then, uh, yeah. It'll kick in pretty quick."
She nods along. Quick is what she wants. When Eddie looks in yet another little container and says "Oh, shit," though, she feels a fresh burst of nerves. "You're sure you have it?"
"No, no, no, I got it," he assures her quickly. "Uh, somewhere." Without another word, he holds up a hand and runs into the back, where she can only assume his room is, leaving her standing in what amounts for the trailer's living room. It's not such a bad place, really. Run down and lived in, sure, but comfortable —
Or it would be, if the clock weren't beginning to chime.
Gasping, Chrissy turns toward the window, looking out at the still, dark night. There's nothing there, nowhere the ticking sound could be coming from except her own mind. She pulls the curtains shut quickly, turning in the direction of the hallway again. "Eddie?" she calls, trying not to sound so frantic, mostly failing. "Did you find it? Eddie?"
There's no answer. She definitely shouldn't be walking back to Eddie's bedroom, but she's desperate and she needs this now.
She calls his name again, but when she turns into the room, hand against the door frame, he isn't there. Her mother is, sitting at her sewing machine, altering her cheer uniform. "Mom?"
"Just loosening this up for you, sweetheart," her mother says, as sweetly cruel as ever. "You're going to look absolutely beautiful."
Her voice changes, deepens, distorts. Chrissy doesn't have a chance to react before her mother turns, and her face is — wrong, somehow, smile pulled too tight, eyes gone white. With a sharp breath, she pulls the door shut, anything to put distance between them, and she's not at Eddie's, she's at home. How could she be at home?
"Chrissy!" comes her mother's voice from behind her, still with that strange, distorted echo, the door giving way. Instinctively, Chrissy yanks it shut again, fighting as best she can, unable to help letting out a shriek. "Chrissy, open the door! Let go! Let go!" She doesn't want to let go, but she can't hold on, and she's taking off down the hall as soon as the door flies open, not wanting to see what's behind it. Bolting down the stairs, she pauses for just a moment, taking stock of her surroundings. There's a light in the den. Maybe her father will help her. Maybe he needs help.
"Dad!" she calls, taking off again, running to him. "Dad! Dad?"
He turns toward her. His eyes and mouth are sewn up. She screams again, this time loud and long and shrill, until the lights start flickering, and she knows she's caught. There are footsteps on the stairs that definitely don't belong to her mother, a deep voice, one that's become familiar by now, saying her name. She runs anyway, because it's all she can do, away from her struggling father, into the dining room, where she takes in the sight of food on the table — rotted, covered with flies and spiders — before she keeps going, trying to get to the front door, her best possible means of escape.
Throwing the double doors open, she finds, instead of a way out, wooden boards, keeping her trapped in here. "No!" she says, pounding against the planks, throwing her body against them. "Help, help! Somebody help me!"
No one comes. No one hears her. No one's ever heard her.
"Chrissy," the deep voice says again, rounding the corner now. There's nowhere left for her to go, nothing for her to do but cry as the horrible creature encroaches on her, shrinking back like it will make any kind of difference. "Don't cry, Chrissy," he says, lifting one hand, a long, wet, spindly finger brushing a tear off her cheek. "It's time for your suffering to end."
He says it almost like it's a good thing, like he means to be compassionate, like he hasn't been haunting her for days and chasing her through her own home. And she did want that, didn't she? Not to hurt anymore, the way she's hurt for so long. She just didn't want it like this, the thought just barely crossing her mind before he extends his hand, holding it up over her face, snapping her head back.
Everything hurts, her mind and body both, and then everything goes dark. Somewhere, Chrissy crumples, a cheerleading uniform-clad heap on the ground.
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There are people from Hawkins here. Loads of them. Not all the ones he wants to see, but he thinks as long as he steers clear of the Chief, he might make it through the rest of them okay, even if they don't remember him. Or they do, but not really how he wants them to. It sucks. As far as Hopper is concerned, he's a fuck up and a drug dealer. As far as Harrington and Robin are concerned, he's a freak. He would be used to it, except the few days before he got here had kind of shaken shit up.
Now that he has time to sit and actually think, too, there's a lot of guilt. He can feel it clawing at his throat, like a pressure on his chest, and for a second, when the body crumples to the ground in front of him, Eddie kind of thinks he's just lost his mind. For real this time.
But she's real. Lying there in the grass in the park, she's real, and Eddie drops to his knees to grab her shoulders.
"Chrissy?"
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Only it's not him at all. Eddie Munson is kneeling over her, hands at her shoulders, and even as part of her doesn't trust any of her own senses right now, she doesn't think she's ever been so glad to see anyone in her life. "Eddie?" she asks, her voice small and weak. She can't even bring herself to be embarrassed by how she sounds, at least not yet, or by the fact that there are tears in her eyes again, a hitch in her breath that comes out as a tiny sob.
Rather than pulling away, now, instead, her instinct is to move closer, hands clutching at his shirt like a lifeline, like he's the only thing keeping her from whatever awful fate she just narrowly escaped. If this isn't real either, then at least it's better by far than the rest of what she's been seeing. At least, for a few moments, until one or both of them comes to their senses or everything distorts again, she can feel something resembling safe.
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The last time he had seen her, she'd been broken, twisted, like a discarded doll, and Eddie feels something inside him tremble and threaten to crack.
"Holy shit, are you real?" he asks, his hands moving from her shoulders to her upper arms, to the sides of her neck, touching her in ways he never would have dared back in Hawkins. Jason Carver and half the basketball team would kick his ass for laying his hands on the Queen of Hawkins High, but Eddie isn't thinking that. Eddie just needs to be sure she isn't dead.
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He touches her like she's real, though, and some small part of her takes that as permission. Before she can rationalize herself out of it, she leans in closer still, pressing her face to his shoulder. For once, she can't get hung up on how she must seem right now, even more of her image shattered. She just wants, desperately, to have a moment's respite.
"Are you?" she asks, muffled and terrified, but a little hopeful, too. "I thought —"
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He can't just lie to her. He can't keep all that awful shit from her, even if it would be better for him. Running away when she was dying is pretty much the worst thing he's ever done. Ever. He can't run away from the truth, too.
"Yeah," he says. "I know. I think we're real. As real as we can be in this weird place we are now, but... shit, Chrissy. I ran. I'm sorry, I should've stayed, but I just... I freaked."
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"I tried to," she replies, struggling to make sense of what he's said and what's just happened. Did he see it, too? She didn't see him, but nothing that she was seeing should have even been possible. Maybe he was there, and she just missed him somehow. Maybe he got dragged into it because of her and her screwed up brain. "To run, I tried, but... I couldn't get away."
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"Okay, come on," he urges, getting to his feet, then offering his hands to her. "Let's, uh... we should go somewhere other than sit in the park here and I can sort of explain some really fucked up shit."
Sort of. There's a lot of disbelief she's going to have to suspend.
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"Thanks," she says, shifting her weight for a moment, uncertain. Her body aches, limbs sore and stiff — not like fresh injuries, but the ghost of old ones, like the time she broke her foot as a kid, then started walking again after her cast came off. Healed, but with the memory of having not been. It's hot out, too much so to be wearing her cardigan, but a shiver runs through her all the same. Now that her face isn't buried in Eddie's shoulder, she can get a better look at where they are, a park she doesn't recognize at all. "Do you know somewhere we can go?"
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"It's a different place," he assures her quickly. "Not the trailer. We're... kind of in a different world. Reality? I don't really know, it's pretty hard to make sense of it and... it's just not the trailer, okay? I wouldn't bring you back there."
To the place where she died. Even being there while trying to save Hawkins had been like a punch to the gut.
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Without meeting way out in the woods, without the cover of darkness like when he brought her back to his trailer before, anyone could see them together. She can't bring herself to care when there's so much else to worry about instead. A different world, a different reality — it doesn't make sense, although in all fairness, nothing has made much sense lately.
"Are you sure you're real?" she asks abruptly, even while prepared to follow along with him. "This isn't all just... I don't know. In my head?"
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Realizing it's not really a fair question doesn't unask it, though, so Eddie does the next best thing and pinches his own cheek. Hard.
"Ow," he says. "I feel pretty real to me. You wanna give it a go?" He leans in, offering Chrissy his cheek, hoping to make see a hint of that smile she'd given him in the woods not too long ago.
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Just like he did earlier, though, when she met him out in the woods, he offers a distraction when she needs it most. She smiles, tremulous and thin but still there, as she reaches over to give his cheek a slight pinch. "You feel pretty real to me, too," she agrees. Given everything, she's not sure that's really saying very much — everything else she's been seeing has felt real, too, impossible to differentiate from reality. For that matter, she isn't convinced now that it wasn't real. "God, you must think I'm crazy."
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"No," he says. "I don't. Or if you're crazy, then I am, too, and that's not as bad. For me, anyway, it might be kinda worse for you."
But at least here, he's only Eddie the Freak to a few people, and Harrington doesn't seem as bad as Eddie remembers him being. Even the Chief seems too distracted by being a dad and a proper cop to give Eddie much thought. It's all kind of a relief. Here, if nothing else, no one thinks he hurt Chrissy.
He's quiet as they walk, staying close to her, not going too fast. She's been through a lot of shit and he wants to give her time. After a minute or so, he says, "I saw the thing that was following you. In your head or... it wasn't really in your head. Or it wasn't just in your head. It was a real thing. A real monster."
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What he saw, too, apparently. Confused as she might have been before, she's all the more so now, and it shows. "You saw it?" she asks, her voice whisper-soft, likely audible only because he's close beside her. In a way, it should be a relief. It means it was real, but that she wasn't just going insane.
She never told him about it, though. She didn't say anything more than that she felt like she was losing her mind, and that she wanted to clear her head for a little while, even if that meant turning to drugs to push it all away. The only person she said anything about it to was Ms. Kelley, and even then, she went light on the details, already certain there wasn't anything the guidance counselor could do to help her. Brow furrowing, she watches him carefully, though she has no reason to suspect he would be anything less than sincere about this. "How... how do you know about that?"
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"Time is sort of different here," he says to start. "It's like... a lot of time has passed since we were in my trailer. Almost a week. It was happening to other people, too. That kid Fred, the one with the scar. McKinney, on the basketball team. This girl Max, too, the one whose brother died at the mall."
Eddie chews his lower lip and exhales slowly. "We went to where it lived. To try and kill it."
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There's only one conclusion she can reach, and it's not very surprising.
"So I did," she says, words slow and careful, her gaze staying fixed on him now, even as she walks. She bites her lip in turn, swallows hard against the lump she can feel in her throat. Her voice wavers when she continues, but she tries her best to ignore it. "Die. Didn't I? What I was seeing, and feeling, that... was it."
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"I tried to wake you up," he says. "You were in this... this trance. It's what he did. Vecna. When you started levitating and then... shit, Chrissy, I ran away. I just freaked out and I ran."
At this point, Eddie knows he really couldn't have done anything, but if he could change that moment, he would. He would be less of a coward and he would just stay with her, even if he couldn't save her life. She shouldn't have been alone.
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Then again, if someone died in the front hallway of her house after going into a trance and apparently starting to levitate, she would probably be pretty freaked out, too, and probably would have run away.
Quiet for a moment, she tries to take this information in. It's really only just confirmation of what she already knew, but it's strange and unsettling to be here, alive and breathing, and yet aware of her own death. "I didn't even know I was still there," she finally tells him, her lower lip quivering with the effort it takes not to just fall apart all over again. "At your place, I mean. What I saw..." It was a nightmare, one that makes her tremble even now, glancing back over her shoulder to make sure there's nothing out of place.
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He trails off again, his face screwed up against the emotion. Eddie hadn't known Fred beyond him being the kid who'd caused that accident, and he sure as hell hadn't liked Patrick McKinney, but that doesn't mean he thought any of them deserved to die. What this creep did to Hawkins, a place Eddie has only ever wanted to escape, turns his stomach.
"It was bad," he says finally as his building comes into view. It gives him something to do, getting his keys out of his jacket pocket. "It was really bad. I shouldn't've run.
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She knows how that sentence ends, after all. After he was done torturing them, he killed them. Killed her. She doesn't know what happened in Eddie's trailer, what it looked like to him, unaware of everything after that monster's hand lifted over her face, but he says it was bad, and she believes him.
"I was already gone," she murmurs, shaking her head, a realization and a rebuttal and a confession all in one. "If what you're saying is true... it wouldn't have mattered where I was. Who was there." Just acknowledging that futility makes her feel dizzy and sort of ill, but she thinks some part of her already knew it anyway. She was dead long before she sought Eddie out at school or went home with him that night. Despite her best efforts, her voice breaks when she adds, "I just wanted to make it go away for a little while."
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If he can.
"Vecna?" he asks as he unlocks the front door of the building. The place isn't great, but it's a hell of a lot better than the trailer, not only because she died there. At least the apartment is relatively clean and he's been at least trying to take care of it, which he's pretty grateful for now. He never figured he'd have Chrissy Cunningham in his place once, never mind twice.
"It wouldn't've helped," he says, wishing he could tell her otherwise. "Music worked. To ground people, pull them back. But the drugs... yeah, it wouldn't have done much. I wish I'd known what you were seeing. All that shit..."
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She's all sorts of messed up inside, and in a strange way, she badly wants Eddie to know that just as much as she wants him not to.
"I told you I felt like I was losing my mind," she points out, her voice still wavering, the slight hint of a smile she dredges up equally unsteady. By her count, it was just a few hours ago that they sat at the picnic table in the woods and he made her laugh for the first time in days. It feels like another lifetime, though, and in a way, it kind of was. "I wouldn't have known what else to say." She means to leave it at that. She can't quite shake the thought, though, idly picking at a cuticle as her smile fades again, and figures the best thing she can do is ask. "How much did you find out?"
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He wonders sometimes what Venca would have made him see. Eddie doesn't think he's had much in the way of real trauma, not until he watched Chrissy die in front of him.
"But if I knew about the creepy floating vine guy with no nose?" he asks. "Well, okay, definitely would've thought you were crazy for real and definitely would've been wrong."
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"Sorry," she says, glancing over at Eddie as the elevator doors open and she steps inside. "Describing it like that is just..." He's not wrong. While it doesn't lessen the terror that still clings to her, it makes it a little easier to bear for just a moment.
"You called it... Vecna, right?"
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"Yeah," he says. "It's a DnD thing. Dungeons and Dragons? The Hellfire Club?"
All the shit that made everyone in Hawkins think he was some sort of satantic cult leading freak. The shit that made everyone decide he was capable of hurting Chrissy in such a horrific way.
"He's like... a god, basically," he explain. "In the lore. We needed something to call this guy and we just sort of latched onto it, I guess."
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