Steve’s best relationship wasn’t even a relationship. He could barely call it a fling, a flirt. They never even went on a date. They never kissed.
Steve still thinks of it as the best whatever-it-is he has ever had with someone.
At the beginning it was mostly infuriating, how quickly Eddie managed to win the kids over, compared to Steve’s months of work as babysitter/nailbat swinger/monster fighter. Steve had to literally bleed multiple times to get an ounce of respect, Eddie only had to run a nerdy club about fictional bleeding and monster-fighting.
Then somehow, and Steve still has trouble pinpointing when and how it happened, everything changed.
Taking the kids back home from hellfire became something he impatiently waited for.
He and Eddie would barely talk for a few minutes and he would find himself replaying the conversation in his head for days. Anything he could say to get a reaction out of Eddie became fundamental, and if he started by picking subjects to piss him off, he ended learning about Eddie’s favorites, because few minutes after hellfire were never enough and Steve needed Eddie to talk as much as possible, until the kids were begging to drop it and go home.
Steve never questioned the change, most likely out of fear. He doesn’t think he ever was clueless, just really scared about what would potentially mean to be staring at another dude’s eyelashes as he goes on a rant about why Ozzy Osbourne is the best artist of his generation. Or blush whenever said dude would call him “baby”, or “sweetheart”.
Steve convinced himself that the thing he and Eddie were having was as good as it was going to get, nothing more.
Then Chrissy Cunningham died, Eddie ran, and Steve realized that the thing will never be enough for him.
He couldn’t not have Eddie. Not watch him as he entertains a bunch of freshmen, as he stomps with his worn out sneakers on top of forniture, as he puts his terrible music on to push away anyone who doesn’t care enough about him to stay.
Steve needed to see Eddie being alive, doing what his heart desires, and he needed to be next to him when he does.
Obviously, this realization came at the worst possible time.
Steve tried to tell him so many times: when they found him at the boathouse, when he was hiding at refer Rick’s house, when they were taking a stroll in the upside down, and even when they were driving a stolen trailer to a gunshop.
But, it seemed, Eddie had come to a realization just as important and he tried his best to avoid Steve at every given chance.
Steve tried to initiate the conversation as Eddie did his best to run away from it. And he ran until Steve had no chances left to tell him how he actually felt.
———
Steve doesn’t know if he’s allowed to say he lost something he never had. To mourn a relationship he never began. A partner that, technically, never became a partner.
After Eddie dies, Steve has no one to be next to but he can’t say he ever did.
Steve just exists waiting. He can’t tell if he’s waiting for the pain to go away or for Eddie to jump out of a bush and yell “ah! I got you sucker!! By the way, I’m in love with you too.”
For obvious reasons, that never happens.
What does happen, is a call.
It’s a normal Tuesday, as normal as you could define it after Hawkins almost collapsed into the upside down. Steve got into a routine, between checking on the ones at the hospital, helping out at the shelter, allowing Robin to check on him to see if he’s still alive.
The call happens while Robin is doing her kitchen check up - aka making sure he has food and that he’s eating it-, so she picks the phone like she did a million times before.
“Harrington residence, this is Robin” she says, cheerfully.
Steve doesn’t pay much attention to it as he’s folding his dad’s old clothes that intends to donate to the shelter, until he hears Robin’s loud gasp.
“What is it? Is it the hospital? Is it Max?” He rushes to the other room where Robin is.
She doesn’t answer but she gives him a look as she passes him the receiver.
Steve goes quiet, a million thoughts going through his head as he takes the phone from Robin.
He’s still unprepared when he hears that unmistakable voice “Baby”.
Steve gasps for breath “Eddie?”
Is that really you? What happened? Are you hurt? Isn’t this impossible? Is what goes on in Steve’s head, but he ends up just asking “are you okay?”
He can hear a chuckle, Eddie’s wicked chuckle, a further confirmation that it is him, “I’m- hanging in there… are you okay?”
Steve finds the question absurd. He isn’t the one who got left in the upside down, the one that got eaten by demonic bats, the one who died before Steve had the chance to tell him how he felt.
He answers truthfully nonetheless, “I’m… I’m not okay.”
“I’ll be there soon, I promise.”
“Please Eddie, come quick.”
“I’ll break the sound barrier for you.”
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Another year, another outfit to die in! Happy birthday again Izuna!!!!!!
Like last year, I played with someone else's lines for these charming patterns, thank you so much Lena @elhnrt ! I had a ton of fun :D
Check the readmore for pattern references and explanations, there are some easter eggs in there :)
(x,x,x,x)
My goal for this piece, in addition to playing with patterns and textures and adding some Naruto references, was to add as many death flags as possible.
The idea of having Izuna in a fireman's coat is obviously not from me. I've always like the idea of Uchihas in fire resistant clothes, and the opportunity for a thick texture alongside a reversible double pattern is very appealing. I used the image of the second reference as a base, with skulls on one side and stylized lightning patterns on the other (visible inside the sleeves and collar). Both were common immagery of firemen coats.
The actual skull pattern is taken from the third reference. I'd seen this one before and before even learning anything abt it it was too beautiful to pass up. Those white and navy gradients are absolutely delightful and I enjoyed using my gel pens for them very much.... This particular type of imagery with skulls and bones in a field is called Nozarashi, inspired by Buddhist representation of death and transience.
The lightning pattern itself is a reference to water and lightning dragons :) Like Tobirama's iconic jutsu, it's one of the hints of what's abt to happen to our little guy. The scabbard is also decorated with dragon motifs for the same reason.
The background pattern is taken from the first reference, another fireman's coat with an illustration of Raijin, the thunder god. He is often representated with drums decorated with tomoes. It works nicely as a standard looking sharingan illustration, with a reference to Tobirama's hiraishingiris with the thunder imagery, like the thunder patterns inside the coat.
If you're interested in this I recommend the book linked in the second reference! It is entirely about skeleton motifs in japanese clothing of the early 20th century.
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Ok I'm probably going to regret reinventing 17th century European religious philosophy here but:
Ludinus's issue with the gods as stated to Imogen and Fearne (and I will state right now that we know he was lying or deliberately misleading at points in that conversation so I don't exactly take him at his word, but let's assume he does mean this) is that they did not prevent the Calamity. I have the following questions.
Does he have any loyalty/feelings about the Titans given that they would have killed all the people in the era of the Schism, ie, the gods averted that Calamity? My guess is no, which means that whole avenue of discussing the Titans was something of a dead end.
How should Calamity have been averted? The Prime Deities during the Age of Arcanum largely let people do what they wanted, which is what led to one of those mortals releasing the Betrayer Gods. Should the gods have struck down Vespin Chloras before he actually did anything, Minority Report style? Can the gods even predict based on the actions of a single individual or small group, because my guess is they can't, particularly since within the current stream of gameplay they absolutely cannot [ie, the reason the Changebringer can't tell FCG to stay or run is because Matt Mercer is the Changebringer and he doesn't know how people will roll; you do need to consider the medium here]. But if they could: so you think they should strike down mortals on the basis of thoughtcrimes? Or control them? In that case, why is Aeor a problem? There's a lot you can argue is justified once you permit the gods to override free will and kill people over mere potential for catastrophe.
On that note, Laerryn both was an unwitting architect of the Calamity (shorted on energy and then killed the Tree of Names, which served as a core planar defense system) but also averted the worst of it. Did the lives she saved by preventing the rise of Rau'shan and Ka'Mort outweigh the lives she took by destroying the Tree of Names? How should the gods have reacted?
Should, perhaps, the gods have all sealed themselves away earlier - perhaps post-Schism? If so, then the issue isn't the Divine Gate, now is it? Should the gods intervene or not intervene? Should they remove themselves or no? It feels like the issue isn't that they distanced themselves so that they can do less in the world, particularly if you wish to kill them, but that you really want to fucking kill them and they made that somewhat more difficult.
How do we know the gods (for example) didn't save Laudna? She was hanged and she's still alive; Morri would probably count this as saving her and I don't see the same desire to wipe out all Archfey. [real talk I find most discussion of Laudna specifically to be...incomprehensibly ignorant in its refusal to acknowledge that everything about it is player agency related, whether it's the story that the cast played out for Vox Machina or the decisions Marisha specifically made in creating the character, ie, do you think Matt should have said "well you can't play a Hollow One because that would mean the gods didn't save you" not to mention the fact that again, we are playing this within a game system where the existence Deus Ex Machina would in fact fucking suck ass; but even setting aside those reasons why this argument is stupid, it's still stupid. It's like a layer cake of stupid.] Again: do you want more intervention or less? Killing them guarantees less.
I'm assuming the problem with the Calamity is the vast loss of life, in which case, what's the math on how many people have been killed by the Vanguard or Imperium in the pursuit of unleashing Predathos? How many more will die?
If the release of Predathos doesn't result in the immediate demise of all the gods, and the Divine Gate is down, why isn't this a recipe for Calamity 2? What was the motivation for killing the gods again?
Should we kill mortal diviners who do not do all within their power to stop terrible things that may come to pass? If the issue is that some people have power without working for it, why haven't we killed all the sorcerers?
Should we be listening to a single word from someone who consumes random fey to live longer, and that's just the start of the CVS receipt of atrocities?
Is there a point where one's deeply held beliefs due to one's own personal trauma become invalidated due to one's actions as a result of that trauma? If so, why is the limit for Orym "is okay with killing people who are trying, directly, to kill you (which, frankly, isn't even a trauma response, that's just called not wanting to die, which I highly recommend as a personal philosophy), and gets upset when people defend those knowingly collaborating with his family's murderers" and the limit for Vanguard generals "family abandonment/just. buckets of murder of innocents./child soldier recruitment in multiple different contexts/eating fey as biohacking/destroying an entire city and the surrounding forest for hundreds of years (ongoing)/imperialism in multiple different contexts/I was going to make a gallows humor joke about how while neither exist in-world they've violated the Geneva Convention AND the IRB for testing on human subjects multiple times over but actually those both are in fact written in a lot of the same blood/probably some others that I'm forgetting"
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