Steve makes Robin and Nancy take Dustin through the gate first. He’s gathering Eddie into his arms when he realizes there’s a pulse, so faint it’s almost nonexistent, thrumming in the hollow of Eddie’s throat. There’s a furrow growing in the earth, a horrifying mirror to the rift splitting the sky. Across the park, the wispy grey grass that grows in patches across the Upside-Down collapses into ashy dirt, and the road starts coming apart in chunks, bucking and yawning as the split gapes wider. The sound it makes as it rips open shudders through Steve’s bones. He doesn’t want to look as the ground crumbles away beneath them, so he’s watching Eddie’s face and he sees the shape of his name on Eddie’s lips and then they’re falling- and Steve wakes up. In 1983.
