I See You (Please See Me): Chapter 10

A Stranger Things Fanfic

“Before we do anything, we need another Walkman.” Harrington hadn’t stopped staring at Wheeler since she’d woken up, and Eddie was fairly certain he would have to physically restrain him from robbing someplace if the others didn’t hurry up and make some sort of plan. As soon as Wheeler had woken from her trance, they had moved to Mayfield’s trailer in case the police or the basketball team showed back up, but Harrington seemed to find even that delay unbearable.

“You can use this one.” Chrissy had refused a chair or spot on the couch (which had been offered by both him and Harrington) in favor of sitting on the floor in front of Wheeler, leaning her head on the other girl’s knees.

Eddie couldn’t help the sharp needle of panic that pierced him at her words (though the thought of Wheeler going without music was also pretty terrible). He had been doing his best to fight the memory of her clinging to him just minutes before, feeling ridiculous for thinking of something so trivial when one of his friends had nearly died. (And yes, strange as it sounded, he realized now that Wheeler was definitely one of his friends, as was Harrington and everyone else sitting in that trailer.)

Wheeler shook her head. “I don’t need it.” She fixed Harrington with a firm look. “He doesn’t want to kill me. At least, not like that.”

“Nance, we all just saw him attack. You can’t–”

“He wants me to send a message to El.” Silence.

“Your, uh, your friend?” Eddie broached. “With the superpowers?”

Wheeler nodded. “He showed me . . . some strange things. We were right that the Creel family was his first victims, but–” She shook her head. “Vecna is Henry Creel, Victor’s son.”

Eddie felt a chill despite the warm trailer. “Henry Creel died.”

She looked up at him. “That’s what we thought. When he killed his mother and sister, he knocked himself out, so Victor thought he died as well, but then he was taken–” She looked at Harrington. “By Doctor Brenner.”

Clearly the freshmen and Harrington recognized this name, but Eddie, Chrissy, Erica, and Robin exchanged confused glances.

“Uh, does anyone want to explain who Doctor Brenner is?” Robin asked.

“That’s the creepy scientist who kidnapped El as a baby and performed science experiments on her,” Sinclair explained.

“Henry was Brenner’s first experiment,” Wheeler continued. “He’s One.”

Something finally clicked into place. Eddie twisted his ring. “So he’s ‘One”, and when you say your friend’s name is ‘Eleven" . . . ?"

“Yes.”

Oh. His stomach churned.

“Did you see any of his plans?” Mayfield asked.

Wheeler nodded and described the death and destruction she had seen. For once, Eddie wished his imagination wasn’t so good.

“He showed me my mom,” she choked. “And Holly, and Mike, and they . . . they were all . . .” She broke off, and Chrissy hugged her legs.

She swallowed hard, wiping her eyes. “He showed me gates. Four gates.”

“Four victims,” Dustin said quietly. “He has two already.”

“Two more, and it’s the end of the world,” Sinclair said. Eddie buried his head in his hands.

Wheeler took a deep breath. “We can’t postpone this any longer. We have to go after him before he kills again.”

“And how exactly do you plan to kill him?” Eddie asked.

“We know his weaknesses now!” Dustin said. Everyone turned to look at him. “What? He’s like Eleven, and that gives us an upper hand because we know her strengths and weaknesses.”

“Weaknesses?” Erica asked incredulously.

“When El remote-travels, she goes into this trance-like state,” Dustin continued, undaunted. “I bet the same is true of Vecna.”

“That would explain what he was doing in that attic,” Sinclair suggested.

Dustin pointed at him. “Exactly. When he attacks his next victim, I’ll bet you he’s back in that attic, physical body defenseless.”

“Defenseless? What about the army of bats” Harrington asked, and Eddie shivered.

Chrissy sat up. “What army of bats?”

“They attacked us when we first got into the Upside-Down.” Harrington lifted the ragged edge of his shirt to show off the bandages. “They took a good chunk outta me before the others got in.”

Dustin shrugged. “We’ll have to distract them somehow.”

Eddie leaned forward. “And, uh, how do we do that, exactly?”

“No idea. We would need something loud.”

Eddie twisted one ring. “I, uh, I can do loud.” Everyone turned to look at him. “My guitar. With the amp, she’s, uh–” He laughed nervously. “She’s pretty loud.”

Robin wrinkled her nose. “Did you just call your guitar ‘she’?”

Dustin waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Once the bats are out of the way, Vecna doesn’t stand a chance! It’ll be like slaying sleeping Dracula in his coffin.”

“That all sounds good in theory,” Robin said, “But how do we know who he’ll attack next? I mean, are we supposed to break into Ms. Kelley’s office again and find every kid who has the same symptoms as Max and Chrissy? Even if we do, there’s no way to sort through and figure out who he’ll attack next!”

“Yes, there is.” Everyone turned to Mayfield, who was staring down at the floor, arms crossed tightly in front of her. “I can still feel him. I’m still . . . marked, cursed. I ditch my music, I draw his focus back to me.”

“Max,” Sinclair whispered, desperately. “You can’t. He’ll kill you.”

“Chrissy survived. I’ll be fine.” She took a steadying breath. “I just need to keep his busy long enough so that you guys can get into that attic.”

Eddie wanted to shoot up, protest that they would find something else, that there was no way she was going to be bait, but a small part of him argued that she was right. This was the best idea they had.

Once they established a basic plan, the next step was actually obtaining the necessary weapons. Lucky for them, Wayne had several friends into hunting and all that survival stuff, so Eddie knew the best shopping places. He pulled out the phone book and found the ad for The War Zone.

Far sooner than seemed possible, they were on their way in a stolen RV. Wheeler sat up front with Harrington as he drove, Sinclair and Mayfield sat in the back seat having a quiet conversation (Eddie could guess what it was about, and he couldn’t blame Sinclair for trying to talk her out of her plans), and Robin, Dustin, and Erica sat at the table, going over timing for each group. That left Eddie and Chrissy squished beside each other on the floor.

He was trying very hard to keep at least a little distance between them, but there was only so much room on the floor, and anytime they passed a sharp curve, one of them fell over onto the other.

“Sorry,” he muttered, grabbing onto the counter and trying to keep upright as they passed yet another curve.

Chrissy giggled. “You don’t have to keep apologizing. I know there’s not much room.”

“Okay, next time I’ll just fall right on top of you.” She laughed again, and he relaxed a bit. In a few hours, one way or another, everything would be over. He remembered what Mayfield had said about good memories, and, though it might be silly, he couldn’t help but think that as long as Chrissy could keep smiling, she was safe. He glanced over at Mayfield. She was harder, but Sinclair seemed to be doing a good job of it on his own.

“How did you learn to hotwire a car?” Chrissy asked suddenly, and Eddie wished he had been faster in coming up with a conversation topic.

He twisted his ring. Why had it been so much easier to explain to Harrington? “That’s, uh, that’s not a super interesting story.”

She looked down and rubbed her cast. “Sorry, you don’t have to tell me.”

He glanced over at her. “No, it’s, uh, it’s okay. My dad taught me, as a kid. Taught me a lot of things I hope never to use. That, specifically, was two weeks before he was arrested. Haven’t seen him since.”

She bit her lip and ran her fingers along the Walkman at her hip. “I'’m–I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

He shrugged. “Don’t apologize. You didn’t know. Besides, it was after that that Wayne came to pick me up, and I’ve lived with him since then. My life hasn’t, uh, hasn’t been great, but that was probably the best thing that could’ve happened to me. That was the moment my life completely changed.”

She smiled shyly up at him, and he thought it was incredibly unfair that anyone could still look so cute after going through everything she had. “I’m glad for that, then.”

He cleared his throat and looked down at his rings, trying to think of some sort of conversation topic that at least somewhat made sense. “What about you? Did you ever have a moment when your life completely changed?” Immediately he regretted the question. A near-death experience would change anyone’s life, and he didn’t want her to have to think about that right now.

“Meeting you,” she said without hesitation. His head shot up. “Well, the second time,” she amended. “At the picnic bench.” She twirled the end of her ponytail around her finger. “I didn’t know I was being attacked at first. I told you I thought I was going crazy, but you were the first person who noticed something was wrong. I had been having the visions and nightmares for weeks, but . . . I was too afraid to tell anyone. If, um, if I hadn’t met you, I probably would have just . . . disappeared.” She pulled her knees to her chest. “I don’t even know if anyone would have noticed.”

Eddie swallowed. “That’s–that’s not true.” That couldn’t be true. He wanted to remind her of her family, her friends, her boyfriend, all of whom would miss her, but he knew the words would sound hollow. He didn’t really know any of them, so why should she believe him? “I would have noticed.”

Her tear-filled, blue eyes met his, and one corner of her mouth twisted up in a wry smile. “I’m sorry I didn’t remember you.”

He grinned. “But you did, though. Just didn’t recognize me. Big difference, you know.”

“I still feel bad.”

He shook his head. “Don’t. I bet you’ll always recognize me now. I mean, the school freak you went on an adventure with to stop an inter-dimensional wizard? That’s probably going to stick, right?” She laughed, burying her face in her hand to muffle the sound, and he smiled. “One day, you’ll be back in Hawkins, showing your fancy college friends around, and they’ll look at me and ask if you really know everyone in town, and you’ll say, ‘oh, yes–'” He raised his voice an octave, which sent her into even more giggles. “You’ll say, ‘oh, yes, I know him. We rode around in a stolen RV together and fought an evil, undead wizard, all before we graduated high-school!'”

He glanced up and noticed Dustin now staring at the both of them, eyebrows raised significantly.

“Shut up,” Eddie mouthed at him, and the younger boy smirked.

“I’m glad we’re friends now,” Chrissy said when she stopped laughing, drawing his eyes back to her.

“I–what?” His brain caught up. “We’re friends?”

She frowned, cocking her head. “I thought so. Are we not?”

“I, uh, no, no. I just didn’t think you’d want to be friends with me.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

He raised an eyebrow. “Why wouldn’t the queen of Hawkins High want to be friends with the freak?”

She tugged on her hair again, looking away. “They shouldn’t call you that.” He really wanted to ask what she thought they should call him, but decided against it. She glanced back up. “I’m sorry for never saying that before.”

He shrugged. “It doesn’t bother me what they say.” Much.

“It still isn’t right.”

“They’re high-school students, Chrissy.” He grinned. “Much as I’d like to see you try, you can’t lead a one-woman reformation against the popularity caste system.”

She chewed her lip, one corner of her mouth quirking up. “But, we are friends, right?”

He smiled. “If you’re willing to be my friend, then absolutely.”

“Good.” She picked at the edge of her jacket, and he waited for her to say what was on her mind. “Are you sure you want to be the distraction? For the bats, I mean.”

Actually, he had been trying hard not to think about it the whole trip. He sighed. “Well, I don’t want to, but I don’t think anyone is going to like their role tonight.” He forced a chuckle. “Well, except whichever one of those three–” he pointed to Wheeler, Robin, and Harrington, “gets to deal the final blow. I bet they’ll like that part very much.”

She forced a small smile. “That’s true. I’m just worried about you.”

Oh.

He swallowed and ran his hand through his hair, turning away. He couldn’t remember the last time anyone but Wayne had been worried about him. (Even Wayne was always quiet in his care: leaving the porch light on when he was out late, dropping a jacket over him when he fell asleep on the couch, making an extra pot of coffee when exams were coming around.) He certainly couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked at him like that, and he really, really wished he wasn’t pressed quite so close to her right now.

“Please . . . just be careful?” she murmured.

He twisted his ring. “I will. You be careful too.” He glanced back at her.

Her eyebrows shot up. “Me? I’m not the one going anywhere dangerous.”

“Be careful anyone.”

She smiled, and he knew he was getting far too accustomed to that smile. “Okay.”

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