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rip-quizilla · 11 months

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Monsters & Miracles

Chapter 1: This Story's Still Going

Pairing: Kas!Eddie Munson / Wendy Robinson (Art Teacher!Original Character)

Summary: Twenty years ago, Eddie Munson was supposed to die. Instead, he became something else- something dark, with a purpose he did not know but feared nonetheless. Now, two decades after his rebirth as a monster, he can't believe his eyes. He had expected his own reflection when he'd looked in the grimy, vine-covered mirror, but instead there's an angel staring back at him. ~ Wendy Robinson has gotten very good at distracting herself. When she thinks about her father's passing, she drowns out the thoughts with music. When she can't describe her feelings with words, she paints them to life on a canvas. But lights flickering and exploding in her apartment? A voice she's never heard before screaming inside her head? Looking into her bathroom mirror and seeing a man bathed in dark blue light, with horns and claws and sharpened teeth?

She's not sure she can distract herself from that.

Word Count: 7.1k

Tags (from AO3): Eddie Munson as Kas the Betrayer (Dungeons & Dragons) ×Eddie Munson Lives ×Eddie Munson in the Upside Down ×Alternate Universe - Future ×Older Eddie Munson ×Reader-Insert ×Original Character(s) ×Older Steve Harrington ×Stranger Things 2006 ×Art teacher! reader ×Kas! Eddie Munson ×Married Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler ×Religious Imagery & Symbolism ×Catholic! Eddie Munson ×Coach! Steve Harrington ×Hawkins High School (Stranger Things) ×Hawkins (Stranger Things) ×Slow Burn ×Fluff and Angst ×Mild Smut ×Eventual Smut ×

Chapter 1: This Story's Still Going

~2006~ The Upside Down

Twenty years ago, Eddie Munson was supposed to die.

Twenty years ago, he had bravely battled in the Upside Down and sacrificed himself for the sake of a town that had never wanted him, never trusted him, never saw the good in him that had always been undeniably there.

Twenty years ago, Eddie Munson chose not to run away. It had cost him his life.

After that, things were different. For a while, he’d wondered if he had died that day. If the holes in his side and the blood that had stained the white of his shirt to rust brown were just a part of his own personal Hell. Perhaps they symbolized some transgression from the life he’d led, one demobat bite for each sin, each commandment broken.

Thou shalt have no other gods before Me.

Music was his God. When his mother had died, Jesus hadn’t offered any comfort. Music did.

Honor thy father and mother.

Eddie’s father had never honored him, so Eddie had paid that back in kind. His mother? No doubt she was rolling in her grave up in Hawkins. Eddie had ended up a drug dealer who never graduated high school… what mother took pride in that?

Thou shalt not kill.

Eddie wasn’t a killer. The entire town of Hawkins had believed he was, but Eddie was sure of one thing- he did not kill Chrissy Cunningham. The guy who did kill her was no longer human, but something else.

Just like Eddie.

He had been human before, but after twenty years in the Upside Down, Eddie had changed. Adapted. He’d done what he’d needed to in order to survive.

The lethal venom in the demobats’ fangs had slowed his heart rate substantially, giving the foreign substance time to travel through his veins. It wrapped itself around him, enveloping everything he had been and turning his present into his past. With every strand of DNA it found, the venom painted itself into Eddie’s very chemistry. While Eddie had lay unconscious on the vine-covered ground, he could not feel his bones snap, making way for new growth. Could not feel the way his skin knitted itself back together over his rib cage, growing back thicker and leathery to the touch. Did not notice the way his canine teeth had sharpened into points, nor his nails that turned to claws, nor the way that his shoulder blades had begun to jut out as if new growth wished to burst through his skin like the buds of a springtime bloom. A strange metaphor; nothing new grows here- only things reborn.

When he had awoken, he had been afraid. He was afraid for a long time, alone for a long time. And then, one day, he wasn’t afraid anymore. He wasn’t alone- nothing in this place was alone, for everything here was connected.

And that meant that it had only been a matter of time before something found him.

For a while, that connection between himself and…them… was all that drove him. He did not resist because he did not think there was a choice in the matter. This new body was sharp, rough, and powerful, and Eddie did not know what to do with it on his own. It was easier to just comply, to let himself become a drone.

He mostly followed the bats.

It was funny; poetic, even. He joined a flock of the very creatures that had destroyed the Eddie he once was. He was basically one of them, flying around on the leathery wings that had finally grown long enough to carry his weight, keeping watch over this dusty version of an empty Hawkins. At first, it had been painful to gaze down at the ghost of what had once been his home, taunted by this mimicry of the thing he wanted most but can never return to. Eventually, he grew numb to it. He forced down the memories like they were bile and continued to follow orders.

Until Vecna decided the time had come to exact his revenge.

He had been too weak the first time. The day Eddie had his brush with death, Vecna had come even closer. All of this time, he had been getting stronger, forming a new plan for how to overcome Eleven and reopen a gate from his domain into hers.

Eddie knew this- all of the Upside Down knew this. The phrase ‘hive-mind’ echoed in his memory, and it awakened a need to protect, a need to fight- but it wasn’t Vecna that he wanted to protect.

It seems his final act of heroism had instilled something in him. A sense of right and wrong that he would not violate, a sense of camaraderie with the people of Hawkins that he could not shake no matter how hard he tried. Alongside this sense of right and wrong, another core belief sat nestled into the very center of Eddie’s psyche- that nonconformist rebellion, fighting against Eddie’s new instinct to obey.

And so, Eddie began to wage war against his reborn self. Follow orders? Nah, not Eddie. No way. Take your forced conformity and shove it up your ass.

Bit by bit, he defied orders in the slightest ways. As long as Eddie’s defiance was insignificant enough, Vecna didn’t seem to notice. So he peeled himself away, connected but separate, always listening for Vecna’s plan so that he could protect the town he was willing to die twice for.

This is where our story begins- twenty years after Eddie became a monster, cursed to live inside an echo of his past life. Here, in the dusty, vine-covered copy of his trailer, Eddie sat in a room that looked like his, at the edge of a bed identical to his own, head hung low and eyes wide with disbelief.

Because for the first time in twenty years, he could hear music. And he’s sure he’s crazy, because even though it’s faint, he would recognize that guitar riff anywhere.

The Trooper. Iron Maiden. 1983.

You’re losing it again, he thought to himself, this is a hallucination. Your memory is teasing you.

Eddie’s mind didn’t even belong to him anymore. He should’ve known that any semblance of sanity would be fleeting.

He didn’t care, though. Even if this wasn’t real, he could not deny himself this small joy- sitting in a room that was the closest thing to his own, listening to this song that made him feel like a kid again. He did not want to question this little, unexpected blessing. Eddie closed his eyes, ears straining to hear every note. His head moved up and down ever so slightly to the beat, fingers twitching on his knees like they ached to move along the frets of his old guitar. He even started to hum. His vocal cords felt scratchy, clawing the sound as it creeped tentatively from his throat. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d actually spoken, much less sung.

When the song had finished, Eddie held his breath. He didn’t know if his tortured mind would bless him with another gift from the depths of his memory, but he hoped.

When he heard another song start to play, he smiled. It was tiny, just a sliver of a grin, but it counted. Eddie couldn’t remember the last time he had smiled.

This continued for over an hour before the music stopped. Some of the songs he’d known, some unfamiliar- but he loved each one all the same. When it became clear to him that his small little joy had ended, he fought the urge to yell, to scream at whatever strange god had decided to tease him, but he did not. He couldn’t explain why, but he had a gut feeling that if he made a sound, did anything to notify the ones who control that something different- something good- had managed to squeeze itself into this godforsaken place, they would snuff it out.

So instead of screaming, Eddie scooted further onto the bed that felt like his. He shifted his wings to take up as little room as possible, doing his best to curl into a ball underneath the sheets. He didn’t know why he had expected it to be warm in this bed; it wasn’t. He pretended it was anyway.

This is where Eddie Munson fell asleep, nestled into a bed that wasn’t really his in a home that wasn’t really home, letting his tears soak into a cold pillow. He prayed to a God he didn’t really believe in, begging to hear just one more note, one more chord, something, anything to help him feel like a boy again instead of a monster.

~2006~ Hawkins, Indiana Christmas Day

This was the first Christmas that Wendy Robinson had ever spent alone, and so far it was not feeling very holly or jolly.

She’d tried her best to forget about it the night before, pretending it was just a normal night. Turning on the radio wasn’t an option, or else she would be pelted with holiday songs on every channel, so instead she’d listened to her old CDs to pass the time. Joy Division, Iron Maiden, Nirvana, Nine Inch Nails- she’d torn her way through them while busying herself with her art- paints, brushes and color-stained paper towels strewn across the giant tarp that encompassed the living space in her apartment. A year ago, Wendy might have put up decorations- a tree in the corner, a wreath on the door, maybe even gingerbread cookies on cooling racks in the kitchen.

But she was alone this year, and Christmas just didn’t feel right alone.

So she was determined to treat today like any other day, and that meant holing herself up in her apartment like it was a cave and ignoring the rest of the world, because if she were to walk through that front door, Wendy knew that she would see snow outside, and it would all be downhill from there.

Instead, she stared at her face in the mirror as she brushed her teeth. She splashed some water on her face. She fixed herself a glass of water. She did everything that made days normal, including blaring her music loud enough to inflict hearing damage.

Today Wendy chose a CD she’d burned herself- a compilation of rock songs she’d grown attached to over the years. As the familiar opening beats of “1979” by The Smashing Pumpkins started to play, she began stripping out of her pajamas and donning a comfortably baggy pair of paint-streaked denim jeans along with an old white sleeveless tee- also covered in old cracked paint splatters and streaks. Then, sitting cross-legged on the floor, she began her work.

The canvas before her contained the bones of… something. Wendy wasn’t quite sure what this piece would become, but the feelings she had been pouring into it so far were, in a word, bleak. Her pieces were often darker in terms of mood and subtext, yes, but this… it was just straight up sad. A wash of grayish blue made up the murky background of the image, the colors growing deeper and more intense toward the bottom. The rest of the canvas was blank, save for a few marks that Wendy had lightly drawn with a pencil as the beginnings of a figure in the center. Now, however, Wendy grimaced as she stared at the picture before her.

It looked juvenile to her, placing the focus of the painting right smack dab in the center of the frame, too easy. Predictable. Nothing worked out that way in real life, right? Nothing that was real was ever predictable. If life were a predictable thing, hers wouldn’t have turned out the way that it had. She wouldn’t be in Hawkins. She wouldn’t be alone. She wouldn’t be fucking miserable on what used to be her favorite holiday. And her dad…

Nope.

Wendy closed her eyes, straightened her shoulders, took a deep breath. In…out…pressed the heels of her palms into her eyes as if she were trying to stop blood from flowing. She focused on the music; it didn’t heal the wound by any means, just staved off the overflow. It was a band aid- no, a tourniquet. One more breath, then she opened her reddening eyes. The gray-blue canvas stared back, and it offered no comfort- only an outlet.

That was fine.

Wendy squinted, as if letting the canvas blur between her closing eyelashes would help her diagnose the problem. Once she recognized what her roadblock was, she could remedy the issue easily. Wendy was good at fixing things once she understood them. She took the canvas gingerly in her hands, turning it this way and that, testing out different perspectives from which she could frame her piece, until she settled on turning the canvas from portrait to landscape, the darker blue now focused on the right growing to a lighter gray on the left.

This could work.

Wendy stared at the new orientation, letting the music wash over her as a vision began to manifest behind her eyes. The song had changed twice since she’d sat down, and an old favorite from her high school days was busy filling the silence.

“What became of the man that started

All are gone and their souls departed

Left me here in this place so all alone

Stranger in a strange land

Land of ice and snow”

The lyrics had always been evocative to her- painfully sad to the point of desperation, but Wendy had never felt them like this; today, for whatever reason, Wendy felt the weight of those words in her very core. She looked around at her little apartment- registered the gray-green walls, the drawings etched in charcoal and taped to spaces she’d deemed too empty, the plethora of empty mugs set on end tables and countertops that had been forgotten in the days since the holiday break had begun. Everything about it screamed “single-person household” Wendy had done what she could to make this place feel like home, but she wasn’t used to being the only person in a home… if this apartment was where she was always alone, could it ever really be a home?

Would she ever have a home again?

This time, she let the tears fall. Careful not to let any of them fall on the canvas, Wendy grabbed a wide brush and swirled it around in the water filled jar sitting to her side. For the rest of the song, she proceeded to cover the sketched lines of a figure that would never be with more gray and blue until the canvas was nothing but background. Once she was satisfied with this new foundation, Wendy placed her damp brushes on the towel and left them and the fresh paint to dry under her ceiling fan.

Her cheeks were damp, but she was grateful her crying hadn’t escalated into sobbing this time. That had become commonplace for her when she was alone, especially after she’d first moved to Hawkins in August, but lately the tears hadn’t been as frequent. A few would fall, then just as quickly as she’d begun to cry, they would cease. Like midsummer rain, the onslaught would only last a moment before the sunlight returned.

Wendy supposed that she had begun to master the art of grief.

She flicked the light switch of her bathroom on, but strangely she still stood in darkness. She tried again, eyebrows scrunching, confused when once again, nothing happened. Her eyes flicked to the mirror, and what she saw ripped a gasp from her throat.

Not her face; someone else’s. Wide, black eyes, framed by dark, prominent veins that tapered up and into hair, dark and wild. Horns, shining obsidian, curling to both sides like a ram’s. A mouth, dry and cracked, hanging open to reveal sharpened teeth. All of this was bathed in dark blue, as if night had fallen so hard, it buried the moon and the stars were struggling to provide sufficient light.

Wendy stumbled backward, hitting the open door behind her and stumbling to keep her balance without falling over. Her eyes left the mirror for a split second, and when she glanced back, she saw only her own face, horror evident in her expression as she blinked profusely. Had she imagined that? It- he- had looked so real… like she could reach up to touch the horns growing between mangled raven curls. And those eyes had been so surprised, it was almost as if he had been shocked to see her in the bathroom mirror.

Wendy stood still as stone, willing the mirror to prove she wasn’t crazy. After a few seconds, she shook her head violently, as if a hallucination were water stuck in her ear that she could shake out. She gave her cheeks a couple heavy pats, wiped the excess tears from her lower lash line, and made a beeline for her CD player. Maybe if she turned the volume even higher, she could chase what she’d just seen out of her mind.

~The Upside Down~ Eddie

Eddie’s claws bit into the brittle, corroded wood of the cabinet as he gripped the bathroom counter for dear life. His chest heaved, his mind raced, his eyes bugged out of their sockets when he thought about what he had just seen.

He’d looked into the murky bathroom mirror expecting to see a monster, and instead he’d seen a miracle.

He’d seen eyes that weren’t glazed over or pitch black. Skin that was smooth, unmarred by the cruelty that living in this place always inflicted on every breathing thing. He’d seen what looked like warmth, light that came from the sun instead of scarlet currents bolting across the electric sky. It had been so long since Eddie had felt warm… part of him had loved the feeling- it brought back a memory that he didn’t know was still there, a day spent on the beach with his toes wriggling in hot summer sand. The other part of him had recoiled; he hissed, he burned, he wanted to claw his way underground where it was cool and dark and the sun could never find him.

Eddie wanted that part of him gone. He turned back to the mirror, eyebrows drawn together with determination. He splayed his hands on either side of the glass, careful to avoid the vines that would alert the masses if he were to apply too much pressure, and braced himself against his reflection. He stared vehemently at the glass, willing it with all he had to show him another glimpse of whatever angelic thing he’d seen a moment ago.

Please, he thought, he prayed, he pleaded to whomever was listening on the other side.

Please show me again. Show me again, show me again, let me be somewhere that isn’t here again for one more goddamn second, please-

~Hawkins~ Wendy

Wendy’s paintbrush was alive. It danced across the canvas and had no need for guidelines drawn in lead because it knew the steps by heart. Bristles wet with pigment swept over paint barely dried with precision and purpose, and Wendy’s concentrated gaze was that of a woman on a mission.

She wasn’t sure where this desperate feeling had come from, but it was overwhelming. She felt like a magnet pulled to a destination that she couldn’t see, like it was pulling her with a force so great, it shook her to the core. This want, this yearning- she ached to be shown a glimpse of the thing she desired, and yet she had no idea what she craved. So, she’d turned to art- the only thing that knew her better than she knew herself, and showed her what she felt in a way that words simply could not express.

As her brushstrokes took shape, she could see now the potential in this piece- a figure was beginning to form, though not a full one this time, just a head, the barest part of a torso, a shoulder, an outstretched arm- all of it appeared to be reaching from the darkest blue toward the lightest side of the canvas. It symbolized what she felt perfectly, reaching, yearning for something, but whatever it was lay outside of the frame unseen.

Wendy’s focus was unwavering, her attention fixated on the story that came to life on her canvas. Her desperation grew, anxious yearning clawing its way through her like it wanted to leap from her chest and soak into the image that was becoming clearer and clearer with every stroke of her brush.

Please, please, please, please.

The plea tingled at the nape of her neck, a voice she thought was her own at first, until it grew. It called. It yelled.

Show me!

~The Upside Down~ Eddie

Eddie had forgotten he could bleed.

He’d been invincible for so long that it hadn’t occurred to him that punching the mirror would result in broken skin. He was strangely pleased to know that such a mortal thing like blood was still a part of his biology.

He had gotten angry at the mirror; it had teased him with a glimpse of something that was not of this hell, made him remember the world he’d been born into, then ripped it away in a second and refused to show him more. So he’d punched it. Now, he had a shattered mirror and a bleeding fist.

~Hawkins~ Wendy

“Ow!”

Wendy dropped her brush, the paint slapping a big splotch onto her jeans as she inspected the backs of her fingers. The sharp pain had surprised her, and she wasn’t sure how she’d hurt herself but she could not deny that the ache of broken skin was there, echoing in her hand for a split second before leaving completely. Her skin was fine, marred by nothing but dried smears of paint across her knuckles, but she was sure- she was sure -that she had felt a sharp pain slicing across her fingers.

Wendy stared at the back of her hand, her eyes wide with disbelief, searching for even the slightest red mark on her knuckles, when it happened again.

A flash of blue. A hand that wasn’t hers. Nails that sharpened into points like claws. Dark red blood that trickled over the torn leathery skin that stretched over knuckles much larger than her own. And then, a flash, and she was looking at her own hand again.

Frantically, Wendy’s eyes flitted around the apartment, searching for a sign that something else around her was amiss- that these hallucinations weren’t in her head and she wasn’t going crazy.

Finding nothing to assuage her anxiety, she decided to push it down and pretend that it didn’t exist- a reaction to feelings that was becoming quite common for her these days. She rose to her feet, quickly padding across the room to turn the volume knob on her CD player further to the right. Sure, it would probably bother the neighbors. Sure, she might ruin their home video of little Timmy opening his Christmas presents, but frankly she cared more about her sanity than little Timmy right now. Iron Maiden’s “Flash of the Blade” went from pleasantly loud to blaring, the electric 80’s metal rang out throughout her apartment, and she nodded her head to the beat with conviction, as if each lyric could talk her back into sanity if she tried hard enough.

~The Upside Down~ Eddie

Eddie was going insane.

It wasn’t the first time; he’d lost his mind several times at this point, in fact he was pretty sure that he’d lost that war long ago but here he was, once again raging against his own psyche.

First, he’d seen her face. Whose face, he couldn’t say, but then he’d seen a hand that definitely wasn’t his, so it must have been hers, right? And now, Iron Maiden again. He didn’t know what it all meant, but he had narrowed it down to two possible conclusions: either he had officially gone certifiably, undeniably crazy, or there was somebody on the other side that he was somehow- after all this time- able to see.

He didn’t have an explanation, and if he thought too hard about it he would probably start to believe the first option… but God did he want the second to be true.

He could hear the music even clearer this time than the first; he’d recognized it immediately the moment it had started playing. His fingers had even jumped upon hearing the opening guitar riff, itching at the memory of playing those very chords of his guitar. Eddie took a long, ragged breath as he slumped against the wall of the trailer and closed his eyes. His arms hung loosely at his sides, and he resigned into the melancholy comfort of a song he knew so well. Slowly but surely, he began to nod his head to the beat, finding comfort in the familiar voice warbling out among the sounds of electric guitar.

Then, mingling with the sounds he knew, he heard something else that nearly brought him to his knees.

~Hawkins~ Wendy

“-In a corner forgotten by no one

You lived for the touch

For the feel of the steel

One man and his honor”

Wendy belted out the lyrics loud enough to drown out the thoughts in her head. She closed her eyes, face contorting with conviction as she did everything she could to lose herself in the music.

She had gone from nodding to the beat to full on headbanging, stepping away from her emotional painting to fix herself something to eat. She was just hungry; that was the logical explanation. Once she ate a bowl of Honey Bunches of Oats, everything would be okay. She would eat, she would drink her water, she would take a nap if she needed to- and everything would be fine.

As Wendy stood leaning against the kitchen counter, a bowl of cereal and a spoon held in her hands, she stared at the flakes of grain floating in milk like they were capable of holding her back from the edge of insanity if she focused hard enough. The chorus of “Flash of the Blade” repeated over and over at the end of the song, a comfortable chant for her to pray into the aether. When the song ended, Wendy’s heart rate spiked in the following silence, fearful of losing her mind again without music to drown out the terror.

And then “Master of Puppets” started to play.

~The Upside Down~ Eddie

Eddie started to laugh.

He wasn’t losing his mind. There wasn’t an angel visiting him in this hell. He had been wrong on both accounts.

This was him.

He was teasing Eddie. Laughing at him from his hiding place, watching as Eddie started to believe that he had something to hope for before it all came crashing down as soon as it started.

This was the song that had landed him here, the soundtrack to his final bow out of his former life, the accompaniment to this whole fucking nightmare. That Vecna creep had great timing, Eddie had to give him that.

You got me, asshole. You got the last laugh, again. Well fuckin’ done.

His laughter was manic; hysterical. It grew louder and louder, and Eddie knew he looked insane, he probably looked downright feral, fangs bared and eyes wide as he laughed and laughed, as wet tears began to stream from his coal black eyes.

~Hawkins~ Wendy

Have you ever been alone in your apartment after hallucinating about a demonic looking creature, and then just when you think everything might be okay, you start to hear maniacal laughter in your head?

It’s fucking terrifying.

Wendy had been so shocked and horrified when the laughter rang through her skull that she’d dropped her bowl of cereal on the floor. It shattered, milk and golden flakes spilling everywhere among the shards of jagged ceramic pieces. Wendy, barefooted and scared out of her mind, had clumsily hopped over the mess while frantically searching the room, wide-eyed with fright.

“Who’s there?” she whispered, willing her voice to be louder.

No answer came, the laughter simply continued as Metallica wailed on.

Wendy stumbled through the apartment, grasping onto the kitchen table for dear life. “What is going on?!” She yelled. The laughter stopped.

The voice she heard in return had no face that she could see, but in her head it was clear as day. It was deep, gritty as if it hadn’t been used to speak in years.

“Stop this.”

Wendy’s heart was racing, shutting her eyes and latching onto the music to distract herself from whatever the hell was happening. Shaking her head vehemently, she muttered to herself. “Not happening. This isn’t happening. I’m going crazy.”

“I am not going crazy!”

The voice was like a growl this time, tearing its way through Wendy’s head, and she let out a little frustrated scream. Her breathing was getting heavier, she was practically panting. She worried her heart would leap from her chest, it was beating so fast. “I have voices in my head telling me I’m not crazy.” She felt insane. She let out a huff of humorless laughter, struggling to maintain a rational train of thought. “This is just great-”

“Get out of my head!”

The stereo stuttered, distorting the music as if the CD were scratched and skipping erratically. The few lights she’d turned on began to flicker, and one buzzed as it grew brighter and brighter. Wendy stared, wide-eyed at the bright white burn of the lightbulb, whispering a bemused “What-?”

“I said GET OUT!”

A high-pitched ringing sound pierced the air before the lightbulb burst into a shattering of glass across your floor. Wendy’s scream was shrill this time, and she scrambled back onto the top of the table, sending a leftover plate and mug over the edge and onto the floor. They shattered loudly, grabbing her frantic attention before her head whipped back to face the bulb in another lamp by her favorite reading chair. It burst like the first one had, glowing blindingly bright before shattering like a popped bubble. Wendy’s panting bordered on hyperventilation, and she brought her knees up to her chest, hugging her legs and shutting her eyes tightly as she did her best to curl into a ball atop her kitchen table.

“Shut up!” she sobbed. “Shut up! SHUT UP!”

“YOU shut up!” the voice spat back.

“The voices in my head have a sense of humor,” Wendy huffed between her sobs, exasperated. “Not funny!”

The voice didn’t respond immediately; all that filled the apartment for the next few moments was the hum of electricity flickering in and out of Wendy’s remaining light fixtures. When it did respond, it sounded slightly more… calm? Not that she would call any of this ‘calm’.

“...What’s going on here?”

Wendy could have been mistaken, but she was almost certain she had heard the voice take a breath… and she didn’t just hear it. She felt it. Upon hearing his exhale, she had felt the familiar sense of relief that one got from simply taking a deep breath, in and out. It was long and ragged, drawn out further than it needed to be.

“Are you real?”

Wendy swallowed, her eyes still shut . “...Are you?”

Her apartment was quiet now, even the buzzing electric white noise had disappeared.

“Jury’s still out on that one.”

Before Wendy could comment, the voice added, “Who are you?”

Wendy shook her head incredulously. Was she really about to have a conversation with a voice in her head? Is that how lonely and desperate she’d gotten? “I, ah…” she cleared her throat. “I’m Wendy Robinson.” She cringed internally at the fact that she’d just given the voice in her head her first and last name. Like she was filling out paperwork, or calling roll.

She heard the voice huff out a breath that sounded almost like a laugh but not quite. “Okay, Wendy Robinson,” She shivered at the way her name sounded through the filter of this deep, rust-covered voice. “Are you the girl I saw in the mirror?”

A chill rolled through Wendy at the memory- black, shining horns. Gleaming fangs. A thick mane of dark hair framing pitch black eyes. “Are you who I saw in the mirror?”

The silence was charged this time, because they both knew the answer had to be yes, but for some reason he didn’t want to say it. “Go check.” he replied after a few seconds had passed.

Wendy looked up and across the apartment to the bathroom door, still ajar from when she’d stumbled away from it earlier. “Go check, like… check the mirror?” Wendy looked down at the floor, which was littered with shards of broken glass and dishes. “I don’t have shoes on.”

This time, she heard the voice snort before replying wryly, “...What do shoes have to do with your mirror?”

She gestured to the ground, obviously frustrated. “My floor is covered in broken glass!”

“Why is there broken glass on your floor?”

“Because you made my lights explode!”

“I did n- oh shit, did I?”

“Yes!”

The voice was silent for a moment before Wendy heard a painfully soft “Sorry.”

Wendy took a deep breath, assessing the situation- both the one she could see, and the one she couldn’t. “Well if it was a mistake, then I forgive you.” It was not lost on her that she was forgiving the apology of a voice in her head that she was starting to wonder was a demonic possession or something. She would deal with that later. “Can you see what I see?”

“No. I, uh… I just hear you. In my head.”

Wendy used her foot to scoot one of the chairs surrounding the table as far past the broken glass as she could, continuing the conversation as she maneuvered herself from the table to the chair. “Okay, so we’re both in each other’s heads then? How does that work?”

“Your guess is as good as mine, kid.”

Wendy laughed, actually smiling this time as she hopped from the chair onto a patch of the floor where she was pretty sure no glass had landed. “Kid? It’s been a while since I was a kid, I’m thirty-five.”

“You are?”

“Yup.”

“Damn.”

Wendy scoffed, carefully tiptoeing her way around the floor as she made her way to the bathroom. “Wow, okay, how old are you, then?”

“I, uh…um, I’m not sure, actually. What year is it?”

Raising an eyebrow, Wendy stepped into the bathroom. “2006.” She left the light off; she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t scared to try looking in the mirror and see something that wasn’t her reflection. She was already testing the boundaries of her fragile sanity at this point.

“Two… two thousand… what?” The voice was soft and sad, like she had just told him that his dog had died. Wendy felt a pang of guilt for being the bearer of what was apparently bad news.

“How, uh… how old does that make you?” she asked softly, trying to lighten his mood back up.

He was quiet for a bit before answering, “Has April 15th passed?”

“Mhm.”

“I guess I’m forty, then.”

He sounded so dejected, defeated by something as basic as his age. Maybe he was a ghost? Perhaps this was the soul of someone who had died too young, and they still had no idea that they were dead. She knew the apartment complex had been built on some old abandoned trailer park, and that apparently some sort of dark shit had gone down there years ago. It had been the first thing her students at the high school had told her when she’d mentioned she lived there. Had this guy been involved in that?

“Are you in front of the mirror yet?”

His voice brought her out of her train of thought, back to reality- or whatever this was. “Yeah,” Wendy replied, looking into her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “How do I… see you, I guess?”

“I’m not sure, it’s not like I meant to make it happen the first time.” he said, “Maybe if we both focus really hard on seeing the other, it’ll work again?”

Wendy didn’t have a better plan. “Okay. I’m going to close my eyes, focus, and on the count of three we both look at the mirror.”

“Worth a try.”

Bracing herself against the vanity, Wendy closed her eyes and thought back to the image she’d seen in the mirror before. “Alright, are you ready?”

“Yeah. One-”

“Two-” Wendy counted along.

“Three.”

~The Upside Down~ Eddie

While Wendy had been making her way to the bathroom, Eddie had been tearing posters down to make enough mirror space on his bedroom vanity to see his full reflection. He hated it, but he cared more about this miracle he’d been given than he hated his reflection.

When they’d reached the end of the countdown, Eddie had looked up and miraculously saw something other than a monster.

He saw her.

Eddie stared into his mirror, memorizing every inch of this beautiful, heavenly thing before him. She was real. She was human. She had paint on her arms, her clothes, even a little streak of gray that was starting to crack as it dried on her cheek. Her eyes were wide, her chest moved with every deep breath, her lips opened partly and she looked almost as shocked as he was.

“Have you always had those?”

Eddie started, blinking a couple times as he tried to register what she was referring to. Her hand had raised, pointing up to the crown of his head. “Huh?” Eddie reached up in the direction she was pointing, his hand coming in contact with- oh. Yeah.

Eddie grasped one of his horns, letting his arm bend as it dangled, his eyes refocusing on the cluttered surface of his old vanity. “No.” he said. “No I haven’t.”

“Where are you?”

Eddie glanced up to see Wendy’s eyes searching his background, undoubtedly trying to make sense of the darkness, the vines, the dust particles that floated in the air. He looked around too, grimacing. “I’m a long way from Hawkins.”

Wendy’s eyes widened. “Wait, how did you know I’m in Hawkins?”

Eddie, raising an eyebrow, replied, “I didn’t… you’re in Hawkins? Where?”

“Mirkwood Apartments.”

He shook his head. “Can’t say I know it, but it’s been a while since I was there. Lot of time for new places to sprout up.”

Wendy cocked her head to the side, and good God was it adorable. “How long is ‘a long time’?”

Eddie twiddled a piece of hair between his fingers. “Twenty years.”

“You lived in Hawkins twenty years ago?”

Eddie looked up at her, pondering what she thought about when she looked at him. What did she think he was? A monster? A demon? Even he didn’t know what to make of his reflection anymore.

“I grew up there.” Eddie answered.

There was a long pause before Wendy asked her question, a hesitation that made Eddie anticipate whatever lay on the other side of that silence.

“There were some kids… three kids, I think… who died near here twenty years ago.”

Eddie knew where this was going. He knew what the town of Hawkins had probably thought after the gates had shut and trapped him here in Hell. He could picture it now- Remembering the Tragedy of 1986: Murderer Eddie Munson Still At Large. His photo slapped across wanted posters and front page news. Little devil horns drawn in sharpie on posters that decorated the lamp posts across town, hilariously scrawny compared to the very real horns that now curled back from his temples.

“Whatever you’ve heard,” Eddie began, unsure of why he was defending himself since he had learned a long time ago that explaining your side of the story to people was a lost cause; people believe what they want to believe. “It’s probably bullshit. What happened all those years ago… there’s a lot more to the story than what’s safe for everyone to know.”

“Are you one of the kids that died?” Her voice, like her expression, was gentle. She betrayed no emotion, just compassion, which is what made Eddie feel comfortable enough to tell her the truth.

He sighed heavily, looking her in the eyes and reveling in the way it made his heart pump a little faster. He’d forgotten the way that felt. “I should have been.” he stated bluntly. “Like I said, there’s a lot to the story.”

Wendy’s lips pursed as she stared at Eddie in the mirror. He watched as she took him in, her eyes flitting from the tattered clothes he wore to the claws on his hands. To his surprise, she pushed her weight up onto the bathroom counter, hopping up to sit on the green laminate surface. She sat with her bare feet in the seashell sink, legs bent so that her elbows could rest atop her knees. Wendy smiled softly, resting her head on her hands, fingers interwoven as if in prayer.

“So tell me your story.”

Eddie raised his eyebrows, cocking his head to the side. “You sure?” he asked, bracing his hands on his vanity as he leaned a little closer to the glass. He couldn’t help but mimic at least a ghost of her smile back at her, the corner of his mouth lifting the slightest bit as he inclined his head toward her. “It doesn’t have a happy ending.”

Wendy’s grin widened, a glint of mischief in her eyes. “You said you didn’t die though, right?” she shrugged softly. “You can’t know how your story ends if it’s still going.”

That took Eddie aback; this whole time, for twenty years, he had always seen that day in 1986 as the end. That was where his story had stopped. This thing he was now- he wasn’t Eddie anymore. But then this woman, this angel, had appeared out of nowhere blasting Iron Maiden so loud that it had crossed the barrier between worlds. He didn’t know how, he didn’t know why, but she had woken a part of Eddie that he’d seriously believed to be long dead.

So maybe she was right- maybe he didn’t know how his story ended.

For the first time in twenty years, Eddie looked at another human being and smiled so big that it wrinkled the outer corners of his obsidian eyes.

“Yeah…” Eddie chuckled. A spark of hope was igniting within him; he wasn’t sure if he was in danger of melting or if he was enough of a hazard that he might explode- either way, he enjoyed the rush of knowing that something was…beginning.

“... yeah, I guess my story isn’t over yet.”

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fuckyeahgoodomens · 2 months

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Oooh! A great Gavin Finney (Good Omens Director of Photography) interview with Helen Parkinson for the British Cinematographer! :)

HEAVEN SENT

Gifted a vast creative landscape from two of fantasy’s foremost authors to play with, Gavin Finney BSC reveals how he crafted the otherworldly visuals for Good Omens 2.

It started with a letter from beyond the grave. Following fantasy maestro Sir Terry Pratchett’s untimely death in 2015, Neil Gaiman decided he wouldn’t adapt their co-authored 1990 novel, Good Omens, without his collaborator. That was, until he was presented with a posthumous missive from Pratchett asking him to do just that.

For Gaiman, it was a request that proved impossible to decline: he brought Good Omens season one to the screen in 2019, a careful homage to its source material. His writing, complemented by some inspired casting – David Tennant plays the irrepressible demon Crowley, alongside Michael Sheen as angel-slash-bookseller Aziraphale – and award-nominated visuals from Gavin Finney BSC, proved a potent combination for Prime Video viewers.

Aziraphale’s bookshop was a set design triumph.

Season two departs from the faithful literary adaptation of its predecessor, instead imagining what comes next for Crowley and Aziraphale. Its storyline is built off a conversation that Pratchett and Gaiman shared during a jetlagged stay in Seattle for the 1989 World Fantasy Convention. Gaiman remembers: “The idea was always that we would tell the story that Terry and I came up with in 1989 in Seattle, but that we would do that in our own time and in our own way. So, once Good Omens (S1) was done, all I knew was that I really, really wanted to tell the rest of the story.”

Telling that story visually may sound daunting, but cinematographer Finney is no stranger to the wonderfully idiosyncratic world of Pratchett and co. As well as lensing Good Omens’ first outing, he’s also shot three other Pratchett stories – TV mini series Hogfather (2006), and TV mini-series The Colour of Magic (2008) and Going Postal (2010).

He relishes how the authors provide a vast creative landscape for him to riff off. “The great thing about Pratchett and Gaiman is that there’s no limit to what you can do creatively – everything is up for grabs,” he muses. “When we did the first Pratchett films and the first Good Omens, you couldn’t start by saying, ‘Okay, what should this look like?’, because nothing looks like Pratchett’s world. So, you’re starting from scratch, with no references, and that starting point can be anything you want it to be.”

Season two saw the introduction of inside-outside sets for key locations including Aziraphale’s bookshop.

From start to finish

The sole DP on the six-episode season, Finney was pleased to team up again with returning director Douglas Mackinnon for the “immensely complicated” shoot, and the pair began eight weeks of prep in summer 2021. A big change was the production shifting the main soho set from Bovington airfield, near London, up to Edinburgh’s Pyramids Studio. Much of the action in Good Omens takes place on the Soho street that’s home to Aziraphale’s bookshop, which was built as an exterior set on the former airfield for season one. Season two, however, saw the introduction of inside-outside sets for key locations including the bookshop, record store and pub, to minimise reliance on green screen.

Finney brought over many elements of his season one lensing, especially Mackinnon’s emphasis on keeping the camera moving, which involved lots of prep and testing. “We had a full-time Scorpio 45’ for the whole shoot (run by key grip Tim Critchell and his team), two Steadicam operators (A camera – Ed Clark and B camera Martin Newstead) all the way through, and in any one day we’d often go from Steadicam, to crane, to dolly and back again,” he says. “The camera is moving all the time, but it’s always driven by the story.”

One key difference for season two, however, was the move to large-format visuals. Finney tested three large-format cameras and the winner was the Alexa LF (assisted by the Mini LF where conditions required), thanks to its look and flexibility.

The minisodes were shot on Cooke anamorphics, giving Finney the ideal balance of anamorphic-style glares and characteristics without too much veiling flare.

A more complex decision was finding the right lenses for the job. “You hear about all these whizzy new lenses that are re-barrelled ancient Russian glass, but I needed at least two full sets for the main unit, then another set for the second unit, then maybe another set again for the VFX unit,” Finney explains. “If you only have one set of this exotic glass, it’s no good for the show.”

He tested a vast array of lenses before settling on Zeiss Supremes, supplied by rental house Media Dog. These ticked all the boxes for the project: “They had a really nice look – they’re a modern design but not over sharp, which can look a bit electronic and a bit much, especially with faces. When you’re dealing with a lot of wigs and prosthetics, we didn’t want to go that sharp. The Supremes had a very nice colour palette and nice roll-off. They’re also much smaller than a lot of large-format glass, so that made it easy for Steadicam and remote cranes. They also provided additional metadata, which was very useful for the VFX department (VFX services were provided by Milk VFX).”

The Supremes were paired with a selection of filters to characterise the show’s varied locations and characters. For example, Tiffen Bronze Glimmerglass were paired with bookshop scenes; Black Pro-Mist was used for Hell; and Black Diffusion FX for Crowley’s present-day storyline.

Finney worked closely with the show’s DIT, Donald MacSween, and colourist, Gareth Spensley, to develop the look for the minisode.

Maximising minisodes

Episodes two, three and four of season two each contain a ‘minisode’ – an extended flashback set in Biblical times, 1820s Edinburgh and wartime London respectively. “Douglas wanted the minisodes to have very strong identities and look as different from the present day as possible, so we’d instantly know we were in a minisode and not the present day,” Finney explains.

One way to shape their distinctive look was through using Cooke anamorphic lenses. As Finney notes: “The Cookes had the right balance of controllable, anamorphic-style flares and characteristics without having so much veiling flare that they would be hard to use on green screens. They just struck the right balance of aesthetics, VFX requirements and availability.” The show adopted the anamorphic aspect ratio (2:39.1), an unusual move for a comedy, but one which offered them more interesting framing opportunities.

Good Omens 2 was shot on the Alexa LF, paired with Zeiss Supremes for the present-day scenes.

The minisodes were also given various levels of film grain to set them apart from the present-day scenes. Finney first experimented with this with the show’s DIT Donald MacSween using the DaVinci Resolve plugin FilmConvert. Taking that as a starting point, the show’s colourist, Company 3’s Gareth Spensley, then crafted his own film emulation inspired by two-strip Technicolor. “There was a lot of testing in the grade to find the look for these minisodes, with different amounts of grain and different types of either Technicolor three-strip or two-strip,” Finney recalls. “Then we’d add grain and film weave on that, then on top we added film flares. In the Biblical scenes we added more dust and motes in the air.”

Establishing the show’s lighting was a key part of Finney’s testing process, working closely with gaffer Scott Napier and drawing upon PKE Lighting’s inventory. Good Omens’ new Scottish location posed an initial challenge: as the studio was in an old warehouse rather than being purpose-built for filming, its ceilings weren’t as high as one would normally expect. This meant Finney and Napier had to work out a low-profile way of putting in a lot of fixtures.

Inside Crowley’s treasured Bentley.

Their first task was to test various textiles, LED wash lights and different weight loadings, to establish what they were working with for the street exteriors. “We worked out that what was needed were 12 SkyPanels per 20’x20’ silk, so each one was a block of 20’x20’, then we scaled that up,” Finney recalls. “I wanted a very seamless sky, so I used full grid cloth which made it very, very smooth. That was important because we’ve got lots of cars constantly driving around the set and the sloped windscreens reflect the ceiling. So we had to have seamless textiles – PKE had to source around 12,000 feet of textiles so that we could put them together, so the reflections in the windscreens of the cars just showed white gridcloth rather than lots of stage lights. We then drove the car around the set to test it from different angles.”

On the floor, they mostly worked with LEDs, providing huge energy and cost savings for the production. Astera’s Titan Tubes came in handy for a fun flashback scene with John Hamm’s character Gabriel. The DP remembers: “[Gabriel] was travelling down a 30-foot feather tunnel. We built a feather tunnel on the stage and wrapped it in a ring of Astera tubes, which were then programmed by dimmer op Jon Towler to animate, pulse and change different colours. Each part of Gabriel’s journey through his consciousness has a different colour to it.”

Among the rigs built was a 20-strong Creamsource Vortex setup for the graveyard scene in the “Body Snatchers” minisode, shot in Stirling. “We took all the yokes off each light then put them on a custom-made aluminium rig so we could have them very close. We put them up on a big telehandler on a hill that gave me a soft mood light, which was very adjustable, windproof and rainproof.”

Shooting on the VP stage for the birth of the universe scenes in episode one.

Sky’s the limit

A lot of weather effects were done in camera – including lightning effects pulsed in that allowed both direct fork lightning and sheet lightning to spread down the streets. In the grade, colourist Spensley was also able to work his creative magic on the show’s skies. “Gareth is a very artistic colourist – he’s a genius at changing skies,” Finney says. “Often in the UK you get these very boring, flat skies, but he’s got a library of dramatic skies that you can drop in. That would usually be done by VFX, but he’s got the ability to do it in Baselight, so a flat sky suddenly becomes a glorious sunset.”

Finney emphasises that the grade is a very involved process for a series like Good Omens, especially with its VFX-heavy nature. “This means VFX sequences often need extra work when it comes back into the timeline,” says the DP. “So, we often add camera movement or camera shake to crank the image up a bit. Having a colourist like Gareth is central to a big show like Good Omens, to bring all the different visual elements together and to make it seamless. It’s quite a long grade process but it’s worth its weight in gold.”

Shooting in the VR cube for the blitz scenes .

Finney took advantage of virtual production (VP) technology for the driving scenes in Crowley’s classic Bentley. The volume was built on their Scottish set: a 4x7m cube with a roof that could go up and down on motorised winches as needed. “We pulled the cars in and out on skates – they went up on little jacks, which you could then rotate and move the car around within the volume,” he explains. “We had two floating screens that we could move around to fill in and use as additional source lighting. Then we had generated plates – either CGI or real location plates –projected 360º around the car. Sometimes we used the volume in-camera but if we needed to do more work downstream; we’d use a green screen frustum.” Universal Pixels collaborated with Finney to supply in-camera VFX expertise, crew and technical equipment for the in-vehicle driving sequences and rear projection for the crucial car shots.

John Hamm was suspended in the middle of this lighting rig and superimposed into the feather tunnel.

Interestingly, while shooting at a VP stage in Leith, the team also used the volume as a huge, animated light source in its own right – a new technique for Finney. “We had the camera pointing away from [the volume] so the screen provided this massive, IMAX-sized light effect for the actors. We had a simple animation of the expanding universe projected onto the screen so the actors could actually see it, and it gave me the animated light back on the actors.”

Bringing such esteemed authors’ imaginations to the screen is no small task, but Finney was proud to helped bring Crowley and Aziraphale’s adventures to life once again. He adds: “What’s nice about Good Omens, especially when there’s so much bad news in the world, is that it’s a good news show. It’s a very funny show. It’s also about good and evil, love and doing the right thing, people getting together irrespective of backgrounds. It’s a hopeful message, and I think that that’s what we all need.”

Finney is no stranger to the idiosyncratic world of Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

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