⭑.ᐟ doomsday
❝and the funny thing is i would've married you. if you'd had stuck around...❞
synopsis: everything falls apart and the world moves on without noticing. you choose him by leaving, because your heart won't survive staying.
warnings: post-apocalyptic hawkins, grief, survivor's guilt, ptsd symptoms, emotional withdrawal, angst with no comfort
The ground opens wrong. Upside down. Inside out. Spilling the decaying destruction into daylight like something the world never meant to see.
The military seals it off with fences and language that pretends control—quarantine, containment, temporary. They say it's for safety. For study. For order.
But really, they're looking for El.
Hawkins becomes a wound they refuse to let scab over.
They know Vecna is hurt. They know he's hiding. They keep saying it's only a matter of time.
But they never say what happens if they're wrong.
They don't say what happens to the people who died screaming—before they saw salvation. Just heat and fire and the sound of the earth tearing itself apart.
The town is a mess. A grotesque one. Barbed wire caging in familiar streets. Homes feel like cells, constantly watched. Helicopters that beat the air into submission day and night, a constant reminder that silence is no longer safe.
Every house keeps a light on now. No one trusts the dark anymore.
Every few days, there's another crawl.
Down into rot and red light. Through tunnels that breathe, wet and slow, like lungs. Into spaces where Vecna should be—
And never is.
You come back empty-handed. Every time.
After the third failed crawl, Steve Harrington stands beside you, mud streaked up his jeans, blood crusted beneath his nails like it never quite washes out anymore. He looks at you the way someone counts heads after a disaster—quietly, urgently. Making sure you're still here.
"You good?" he asks.
Soft. Careful. Like you're something fragile he's afraid to drop.
You nod. Because it's easier than explaining why your hands haven't stopped shaking since you watched Eddie die screaming your names. Since the ground cracked open like a punishment no one deserved.
You don't tell him about the dreams.
About the way you wake up convinced the ground is breathing beneath you. About the phantom pressure of vines around your throat. About Max's hospital bed—machines humming, her chest barely rising. Time suspended around her like a cruel joke.
And the world kept moving. Like it didn't eat half your heart and then ask for more.
You don't tell him every crawl feels like a countdown.
Steve knows you better than anyone alive. Which is why it surprises him when you start pulling away.
It's subtle at first. You stop reaching for his hand before the ropes lower. You hesitate at the van before climbing in. You sit with your back to the wall like you're expecting them to bleed again.
Robin notices first. She gets louder—cracking jokes into the air like flares, daring the silence to catch her.
Nancy sees it for what it is and doesn't say a word.
And Dustin—Dustin is drowning. His grief sharpens into anger, jagged and reckless. It becomes armour he doesn't know how to take off, cutting anyone who gets too close before they can leave him too.
The truth is—
You don't feel real anymore.
Something stayed behind in the chaos of it all. Something small. Essential. Something that believed bravery was enough to get you out alive. Now everything feels too loud, too sharp, too temporary—like the world might shatter if you press too hard against it.
Steve still laughs like the future exists.
You can't.
The fight happens after the twentieth crawl.
Another failure. No Vecna. Just soldiers and shrugs and maybe next time.
Steve comes back buzzing with adrenaline. Talking about new patterns, new theories—how Vecna has to be somewhere close. How you're circling him. How they needed just one more push that could change everything.
You're sitting at the edge of the bed, still wearing your boots.
"You didn't even hesitate," you say.
He frowns. "About what?"
"About going back in," you whisper. "You didn't hesitate for a second."
"Because we have to," he says. "We don't stop now."
"You don't stop ever," you snap, standing too fast. "You just keep running straight at it like it can't take anything else from us."
His voice hardens. "So what—you want us to sit around and wait?"
"I want you to stop acting like we're invincible," you say, shaking. "I want you to acknowledge that every time we go down there, there's a real chance someone doesn't come back."
"That's not fair," he sighs, tired.
"I watched Eddie die," you choke. "I watched Max break. I watched the world split open while you held me and promised it would be okay."
His voice cracks. "I'm still here."
"And for how long?" you ask. "How long before it's you? Before I'm standing over your body pretending I'm strong enough to survive it?"
Silence.
Then, quieter. "I can't do this anymore."
Steve steps closer. "You don't mean that."
"I do," you say softly. "Because loving you feels like counting down to the moment I lose you."
He stares at you like you've hit him.
"I'm not leaving," he says. "I'm not dying."
"You don't get to promise that," you say. "No one does."
Neither of you apologises.
The night you leave, the house is unnaturally quiet. No crickets. No wind. Just the steady breathing of Steve asleep beside you, his arm heavy around your waist—anchoring you to a world you don't know how to stay in anymore.
You slip free.
And you pack fast—not because you don't care, but because if you slow down, you'll stay.
You leave behind the old walkie on the nightstand. You leave behind your favourite jumper of his draped over the chair. You leave the version of yourself who believed bravery meant staying.
You don't leave a note.
There is no version of words that survives this.
You don't know where you're going—only away. Away from soldiers and locked gates. Away from the holes in the ground. Away from the way everyone looks at you like you're either broken or waiting to be.
You start the car hidden down the street and head south.
You don't look back when Hawkins disappears behind trees and razor wire.
You tell yourself this is mercy.
Steve wakes up alone.
At first, he thinks you're in the bathroom. Then maybe at the radio station. With Robin. With Nancy. Anywhere that isn't gone.
But the house is wrong. Too still. Like it's holding its breath.
Something cold settles in his chest.
And the funny thing is—Steve Harrington would've married you.
He would've been a good husband. The kind that wakes up earlier just to make sure you have coffee. The kind who learns your silences and respects them. Who holds you through nightmares without asking you to explain.
He would've supported you in quiet ways—fixing what's broken, carrying what's heavy, staying even when it's hard. He would've loved you loudly and fiercely, without condition.
He would've been a good father, too.
The kind who does the dishes when you're exhausted. Who presses his forehead to yours when the kids are finally asleep and says, "We're doing okay, right?" The kind who teaches them how to throw a ball—and how to be gentle. How to be brave, the way he was brave.
Who protects them like he protected them.
Bloody. Exhausted. Still standing.
He would've watched them grow. Watched you grow old together. Talked about the end of the world like it was something that happened in old fairytales. Not something waiting around every corner.
There's a ring abandoned in his drawer.
He bought it in Indianapolis. Right before lockdown. Thought he'd wait until things were normal again.
Like an idiot, he believed in after.
He knows why you left.
You were always the one who stayed awake while everyone else slept. Always the one counting exits. Memorising escape routes. Bracing for the next disaster. Or for that moment someone you loved didn't come back.
Loving him meant imagining a future.
And you were so, so tired of imagining things that didn't last.
Steve doesn't chase you. He loves you enough to understand that sometimes people don't leave because they don't love you.
They leave because staying would destroy what's left of them.
Some nights, he still reaches for you in his sleep. Some mornings, he wakes up and forgives you.
Other days, he doesn't.
And that's the thing about grief Steve learns too late—
Sometimes it isn't loud.
Sometimes it just quietly packs a bag, kisses you while you're asleep, and walks out of the life you were going to die trying to protect.
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