didntrun | (no subject)

He's been here too long.

Eddie doesn't know how long, if it's been days or as long as a week, he just knows it's been too long. His face is streaked with ash, his hair dirty and tangled, and there's blood on the t-shirt he'd been wearing to work the day he'd ended up here. His blood maybe. Or the blood of those weird little children that had attacked him at some point.

That's how he'd ended up with the knife in his hand. He'd taken it from one of them, stabbed them back, stabbed them over and over, chopping at their grabbing hands. Their blood is on his shirt and his hands and he hasn't slept in way too long, but he's afraid to let himself rest in this place. All he wants is to get back to Darrow, back to his familiar bedroom and his friends and his band and his job.

He's tucked into a small corner in what he thinks is some fucked up version of Petros High. Eventually he'll have to move. He keeps hearing things shifting out there in the dark, skittering on a thousand legs like a bug, but bigger. Too big.

Big enough to hurt, he knows.

It's just that he's terrified. Broken. Something inside him is unravelling, because when he was in the Upside Down, at least he was never alone, and now he's by himself. He's found and lost people, seeing them just ahead before they disappear into the ash. Right now, he thinks it's likely he'll die down here, die again, and no one will ever know what happened to him.

Hawkins can go on thinking he's some kind of devil worshipper, he doesn't care, but he wants Darrow to think better of him. He wants people to know he didn't just leave.

The skittering gets closer and Eddie forces himself to move. He leads with the knife, the blade trembling in his hand, then hurries to the door of the office he's hidden himself inside. Behind him in the dark, the bugs get closer and he throws open the door, then rushes down the hall toward the exit.

Outside, the ash keeps falling. It never lets up.

Eddie inhales too deeply, breathes some in, and starts to cough. It's too loud, he's drawing too much attention to himself and he tries to step back into the school, but something has closed the door behind him and locked him out. Something else screams overhead and Eddie goes still, frozen in terror, as a shape materializes from the sky. It's not a bird. Not a bat, and not one of the awful bats that had followed him to Darrow. It's bigger than that, razor sharp talons on the ends of its feet, and they're coming right for Eddie.

At the last second, he thinks to raise the knife, but he just barely nicks the thing. It screams again, awful and loud, and dives for him, talons ripping at his upraised arm, his shoulder, across his neck. Eddie can feel hot blood coursing down his arm, soaking his t-shirt, and he stumbles back, then falls down the front steps of the shitty Petros High.

He's going to die here. He's going to take his last breath on this ashy sidewalk in another version of hell.

The flying monster shrieks and dives again, talons slashing, one cutting across his chest. He alternates between hot and cold as he stabs with the knife, still trying to defend himself, but the talons just keep coming, keep tearing at him, ripping into skin and muscle, sending more blood cascading down his front.

"No," he whimpers. "No, please."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Maybe you are insufferable," Lestat said affectionately, finding himself unable to look away from the amber fire of Eddie's vampire eyes. He had always been beautiful. Now, he was magnificent.

"Come. I believe we might have some luck here," he said, leading his newly made fledgling into what should have been Petros Park. "The air is different. Can you see it?" He pointed to a shimmering in the distance which would have been nearly invisible to the human eye.

Eddie nods and even though he can walk well enough, even though he's covered in blood and gore, he gropes blindly for Lestat's hand to hold. Everything looks different. The entire world, even one as shitty as this, but Lestat points and Eddie can see the tear in the world.

It's beautiful.

"How do we know if it's night back over in Darrow?" he asks suddenly. "Is the time the same here and there?"

"Hm."

It was a problem he had not considered.

Stripping out of his long duster, Lestat draped it over Eddie's shoulders. "Shield yourself with this. If we step into the sun, it should be enough to protect you for the few moments it would take to dash to safety." Then, with a dismissive gesture, he added, "I will be fine."

"If you die, I won't know what the fuck to do," Eddie points out, looking at Lestat very seriously, and seeing so many parts of him as if for the first time. The edge of his jaw looks sharper, his eyes bluer, the colour of his hair shining like gold.

Still, he takes the coat and pulls it over his shoulders, up over his gore matted hair, then nods.

"I'll go first," he decides. Because then, at the very least, he'll be able to warn Lestat. Without waiting for permission, he steps through and, blessedly, into the night.

Lestat was so taken aback by Eddie's conviction, hurtling himself through the breach, and Lestat, with all his supernatural speed, could stop him.

Horrified, Lestat rushed to meet him on the other side, gripping Eddie's forearms with startling strength. They stood under the brightness of the moon, but Lestat hardly seemed to notice.

"How could you be so stupid? I would not die, you fool! I wouldn't," he insisted, gripping Eddie by the arm and dragging him in the direction of his home. "Never do that again! Or are you so willing to throw away this gift I have given you?"

"What?" Eddie asks, gasping when Lestat grabs him. "I have the coat! You said it would be safe enough to get somewhere sheltered! I wasn't-"

He digs his heels into, shocked to realize he can actually resist Lestat now. Before, if Lestat wanted him to go somewhere, Eddie wouldn't have had a choice, and he'd known it. But now, he's stronger. Not as strong as Lestat, not by far, but stronger.

"Stop," he says, dropping the coat. "That's not what I was doing. I know what you did for me." He thumps a fist on Lestat's chest gently. "I know, okay? I'm not trying to waste that, but you gave me the coat to cover myself, so I thought... I could check. I could warn you if the sun was still up."

"You could warn me by going up in flames, is that it?" Clucking his tongue as his coat fell to the ground, he bent to quickly snatch it up. "This would shield you, yes, but you cannot move as quickly as I can. Not yet. Your senses are not what they will be. Until you settle into all that you will become, we go together, yes?"

He shoved the coat against Eddie's chest, though he no longer needed it.

"Okay," Eddie agrees as he takes the coat, even though there's no sun. It had all happened so quickly, he hasn't had a moment to realize they're back in their own Darrow and he pauses suddenly, looking around in the night.

"I can see... way better," he says, voice awed. "Wow. I... everything is so clear."

It didn't look like it would have, were the sun up, but it still looked like more.

Rolling his eyes, Lestat understood now that Eddie would be no less distractable than he'd been as a mere human. In his experience, everything about a person became heightened when they were given The Dark Gift. Their beauty and strength, yes, but also their personality.

"It's a bit like a drug. Or so I've heard."

"No," Eddie says and shakes his head. "Well, maybe, I guess, I haven't tried heroin, but it sure as shit isn't like weed or acid."

Everything is more, but it's clear, too. His head feels free, lighter, like he understands things better, even though that isn't the case. In fact, Eddie is fairly certain he understands less.

"What do you mean so you've heard?" he asks, turning to look at Lestat again. "You've never been on drugs?"

"Through the blood, from time to time, but never directly. I died in 1794, barely more than a pauper. I had tasted ale and cheap wine, and a very indulgent glass of champagne or two. Nothing more."

Lestat reached out, his fingertips touching the halo of Eddie's hair. "Substances do little for us now, unless consumed through the blood. Food will have lost its taste. Now, you will be consumed by other vices."

"Like what?" Eddie asks.

Other vices is so vague and it makes him weirdly nervous, like Lestat might tell him he's suddenly going to be super into completely bizarre. More bizarre than having to drink blood just to survive.

Booze and weed he can give up, he thinks. Not having to eat feels weird, something he's a little worried about navigating with Chrissy, but he can deal with that when he comes to it.

"Is the blood not enough?" Lestat said, amused. "I cannot tell you how you might fill your days. Or how you might find pleasure. That is up to you to decide."

Lestat rested a firm hand between Eddie's shoulder blades.

"Time no longer limits you as it once did. It may be a surprise how such freedom changes you."

Eddie doesn't know what to make of that, how he can turn it into something that applies to his own life, because time is never limitless. There is always an end. Every story has its proper conclusion, the one that fits.

But then, for the second time, Eddie has gone a different way from what he thought was his own ending, so maybe he has no idea what the hell he's talking about.

"Shit," he says, breathing out slowly. "Everything is different."

"Yes, it is," Lestat said, "In wondrous and terrible ways."

The next words he spoke were for himself as much as they were for Eddie. "You are not alone."

Lestat could only hope that Eddie would not wish to be, for loneliness was the greatest agony he could conceive of.