𝐰𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐝 𝐦𝐞𝐦𝐨𝐫𝐲 | Eddie Munson

- chapter twenty four -

☆★☆

SKIES SEEMED DIFFERENT AS THOUGH THE WORLD had become warped through a new camera lens. Colours shifted as perspective switched. The ground was new, a changed consistency that rattled in the headspace of a girl who knew nothing. Absolutely nothing.

Emptiness. It had been something she was used to. Isolation, snakes wrapping loneliness around her neck like a collar. The idea that her life didn't add up to anything of substance, this continuation of a daily routine. The same thing, over and over. In a life where she was fighting for something she didn't believe in and a narrative in which she was an abstract of someone who existed before her.

Lilith was not the girl who had fallen in love with Eddie Munson, who had been raised by Jim Hopper. She had not argued for the liberty of a pet rabbit, did not blow out birthday candles or drink cherry coke. She had never graduated, she'd never danced, never kissed, never loved. Her life added up to nothing because she was not the girl who had lived it. Without memory, who was she? A flickering candle in a light, slowly dimming in the eyes of the observer. If Lilith couldn't remember who she was, how could she ever hope to find herself again?

She walked the streets of Genora with a strange feeling inside of her, light pooling in delicate clouds of lavender above her head. Of course this was not Genora, it was Hawkins. The name unfamiliar on her tongue. The name that, in another life, had once been her home. A name that would once never feel like a stranger. A place she'd grown up, gone to school, played and had fun. It seemed wrong, far away like a desperate attempt of something else.

Part of her wondered if she was going mad. That Eddie was a figment of her imagination she'd created just so she could convince herself that her life wasn't as bad as how it felt. That she'd been forced to come to some other wild conclusion just to escape the hell of Martin Brenner and all his plans. Maybe to everyone else the war was just that, a war. Maybe in their eyes the monsters were just monsters and she was a girl completely alone. She was not some lost love, not someone worth fighting for.

Of course Lilith knew her mind, or at least what was left of it. She was unsteady in her walk and the way she was trying to overcome the overwhelming horror of what she'd just been told. But she knew it was real. Knew because she'd not only seen it printed in the photographs that he'd cried over but also deep in Eddie's eyes. Acting may exist to send people far in life but Lilith didn't believe that such emotion could be forged. There he'd stood, eyes so deep with adoration that for a moment she'd convinced herself that she did love him in the same way. As though some reflection of light had bounced off his heart.

It hurt to think as she traced the roads back to the church. Mainly because she'd just been told that everything she knew was a lie. As much as she wanted to cut the reigns of skepticism and throw herself into everything Eddie had told her, she was still held back by the manipulation of Martin Brenner. So, no matter how much she trusted Eddie, she could never fully set herself free.

There was also resentment. This wasn't aimed at Martin Brenner. No, he received the anguish of a woman burnt. Eternal anger that felt like fire as much as it tasted of it. He'd killed her, that's how it felt.

The resentment instead was aimed at Eddie. There was care there. Lilith wouldn't lie and say she loved him even if somewhere deep in her heart the emotion may still reside. She desired him, she wanted to protect him and she found him more comfort to her than anyone else ever had been. But it still hurt, as though he was holding the truth over her head. She didn't understand him, she couldn't understand him. She wasn't Eddie and in her mind she'd never known him the way he had her. Maybe then, she had no right to ask so much of him but to her it seemed such a simple favour.