Eddie Munson - A Collection of One-Shots!

019. I Didn't Run This Time.

Her gaze was intense, but I knew I'd broken her heart. I hadn't even tried to save her. Couldn't even manage one attempt.

And so I tried to shoulder it as best as I could.
Instead of running like I always did, I tried to shoulder some accountability.

"What I didn't do for you, will always be my biggest regret. And I know that you've given me more than I'll ever deserve..... I can't tell you just how sorry I am." I continued.

"I want you to leave. And I never want to see you again. I never want to talk to you again." She said, with a cutting tone.

I already knew we were over.
Of course we were.

And there was nothing I could say.

And so I watched my girlfriend of three years walk away from me, knowing there was nothing I could do about it, nothing I could do to stop her.

********************************************
Seven years later.

Eddie's POV.

When I thought about her, which was still just as often, seven years on, I thought about how we'd met when we were kids, had grown up together and discovered feelings for each other from when we were around fifteen. We were together for three years.

The best three years of my life.
I often thought about us, on the day we broke up, on the day she asked to never see me again, both eighteen and experiencing heartbreak for the first time.

Well, we'd both experienced heartbreak, but this had been different; it had been a different kind.

She'd felt like I'd walked out on her, left her behind, left her to die.

I had told her the truth; potentially seeing her die in front of me was something I'd decided I couldn't have watched or witnessed.

It had been a selfish decision and I still believed it was to this day.

I'd stood there, both horrified and terrified, the world crashing around me and us.... And it was just one crash, one loss too many for me.

Vecna had stood over her, on the brow of the hill and he'd been strangling her slowly but surely to death in front of me. To this day, I wasn't sure how she'd gotten out, but she did. And the first thing she'd done after that was to avoid me for days.

Until we'd had that monumental showdown.
The showdown that had been the last time I'd seen her.

She didn't blame anyone else, just me.
Because I'd been the only one with her at that time. I'd been the only one she'd seen running away.

Everyone else had either been fighting somewhere else, injured, outmanoeuvred, ambushed or dead.

We were just kids. Kids, taking on monsters, trying to save the world; trying to save each other.

We'd lost people, and we'd all seen far too much.
We'd all reached our breaking point, at some time or another.

We all still had lingering trauma, to this day.

Trauma that sporadically loomed over us, because only we knew what the world could have been like; only we knew what and who we'd lost to get to this point.