❝𝙬𝙝𝙖𝙩 𝙞𝙣 𝙩𝙝𝙚 𝙗𝙪𝙧𝙣𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙝𝙚𝙡𝙡.❞
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The car ride back home was silent, just as lifeless as the body she had to leave behind in the Upside Down. Leaving him there hurt her more than the conversation.
The thing that came closest to that was the fact that she didn't say it back. June didn't tell Eddie she loved him too and it shattered her more every day that he had to die not knowing it.
June's car was still standing close to Eddie's camper, so Steve drove with her car to her house, all their houses were quite close to each other.
June's eyes widened when she saw the state of her house. She opened the car door and got out of the door - she fell in the process, but we don't talk about that - before Steve even stopped the car.
Juniper limped to her house. The big mansion had been split in two, the split burning passionately. Ambulance, firemen and police stood in front of the house, along with multiple camera crews and half the town.
The camera crews followed June closely the minute they saw the startled girl arrive. But all June could see, was the bodybag laying next to the ambulance.
With the tears still flowing, old ones from Eddie and new ones from whatever this situation was, she tried to talk to the officers, "Powell, wh- who is in the.. who is in the bodybag?"
"Miss.." Powell spoke, "please, step back."
Steve parked the car messily in order to get to his friend quicker, but what he found was a slaughter. A slaughter of bricks, flesh and emotions. Juniper's emotions.
"Who's in the bodybag?" June asked once again, this time louder and more demanding. It was her goddamn house, she had to know if her mom and dad were okay.
When officer Callahan still didn't let her through, June punched him in his nuts to get to what she wanted. He folded rather quickly and June ran passed him to the bag.
She dropped down beside it, not wanting to wait to open it. Once the zipper was open and June could see who was inside, she crawled backwards, away from the bag.
Inside was, in fact, her mother. Only her head was missing, they found a headless Lucy McKennan, "We've been searching for her head, but we haven't been able to locate it yet." Powell informed her.
"I'm going to be sick." June muttered before turning her head and spitting out some saliva. She then thought of the other part of this house and swiftly got on both feet, seeing Steve and the rest further away, trying to fight their way through the crowd, "Where's my dad?"
Powell gulped as he opened his mouth to say something, but before a word could come out of his mouth, one of his other officers came out from behind the house. June heard the cameras clicking, but didn't understand what was so important until she turned around.
The officer had her father, Matthew McKennan, handcuffed and ready to take with him to prison. When the firemen were trying to extinguish the fire, they found the pharmacy during doing so.
Matthew was inside there, working on an order he had gotten, but the cops were there to catch him in the midst of doing so.
"No.. no, you can't.. you can't take him! He didn't do anything wrong..!" June cried out. She tried running towards her father, but before she could, two muscled, tall men held her back on both her arms. There was no way in hell she was getting through, "Stop! What.."
"If you want to hear your father's rights, miss McKennan, that is your right." Powell elaborated as professional as he could.
June fell down to her knees on the ground, just sitting there crying and looking at her destructed house, her mother's corpse and her father being put in the back of one of the police cars with Eddie's death still fresh in her mind.
Robin picked her up from the floor to escort her back to the car, "Thank you, chief." she thanked shortly before making sure she wouldn't have to see that picture anymore.
June started fidgeting with the ring on her thumb. Just as she did so, she remembered it was Eddie's. She had totally forgot that she still had Eddie's ring, but obviously she wasn't going to be able to return it now.
"You okay?" Robin asked while keeping her in a side hug.
"My mom's beheaded, my dad's going to prison and Eddie's dead." June summarized before stating sarcastically, "Yeah, I'm perfect."
"Well, you can't live in here." Nancy theorized, "I'm sure it's fine if you live with us until this is fixed."
Nancy went to get her parents, leaving the other five to look at each other and the mansion in the background, everyone was quiet, no one knew what to say.
They just waited for Nancy to come back, all of them had fears of saying something terribly wrong at this moment.
Not long after Nancy came back, saying her parents would come behind shortly, "She'll like you. My mom. She was friends with your mother in high school."
June only gave her a long look and a nod, Robin rubbed her forearm in comfort. Shortly after, Ted and Karen Wheeler came to June's Jeep with their youngest child, Holly. Karen immediately wrapped her arms around June, "Oh, sweetie." she mumbled in her hair, "They really don't like you up there, do they?"
The Wheeler's were one of the lucky ones, with only a small earthquake that interrupted them. Nothing had even broken in their house.
"Mom, I was thinking since Juniper will need a place to stay, she might be able to.." Nancy explained her plan.
Karen nodded understandably, "Of course you can, sweetheart."
"No, Karen, we can't, we're already with five at home." Ted disagreed, "I'm sure you have others you can stay at. My condolences for your mother. She was a lovely lady."
June looked to the ground, trying to keep her tears inside, "I don't have anyone else."
"I'm sure there's someone who's willing to help you." Ted finalized before he walked away with his daughter.
"Ted!" Karen called behind her husband, she stayed behind, putting a hand on June's arm, "If you ever need anything. Anything at all. You come to us, okay? I don't care if Ted doesn't allow it, he doesn't have to know."
June nodded sorrowful, "Thank you, ms. Wheeler."
Karen's hand lingered on her arm, she didn't exactly want to leave and she certainly didn't want to leave her to her faith, but Ted said no. There was no way for her to make him change his mind.
"You should go.." June mumbled to the other four, "Really, you should go. I need to sort out this mess."
"Juniper, we can't leave you with this." Dustin reasoned.
Juniper shook her head, "Yeah, you can. You all have families to get to. Make sure they're okay."
None of them wanted to leave, but since the firemen had extinguished the firs while they had been talking and since she was, in fact, right, they couldn't say no.
Once they had walked out of sight - all of them continuously looked back - June went towards her own house. The camera crews surrounded her the second she came back in sight.
"Everybody, take your shit and leave!" she shouted at all the police, all the firemen, all the ambulance and, mostly, all the camera crews.
It took everyone about ten minutes to get all their stuff and leave the scene. At least June wouldn't need a key anymore, the hole in her house was so big she could just enter like the door was open.
Inside was even more chaotic than outside, everything was either knocked down or broken, but the stairs were still intact enough to walk on.
The once so grand and beautiful entrance was now an awful mess of broken tiles, vases and a sunken table in the middle. June stepped up the stairs, hoping her room or at least her bed was still whole. She needed the sleep after this horrible day.
Upstairs, it surprisingly was slightly better than downstairs. Her bathroom was unreachable because of a beam that fell down and a piece of the wall was knocked down, but for the rest, her bedroom was quite intact. Her bed was rather untouched which was a luck.
Hanging on the outside of her bedroom door was a note, clearly written by Lucy. June took it off of the door and read it.
My dear June,
I hope you're unharmed. I realize now I have wronged you in many ways, but I truly hope I can make it up to you someday. Please, come back home.
Love, Mom
June picked a tear from her cheek reading the letter. Her mother was clearly worried about her, but all she could think about now was that Lucy never made it up to her now.
She slammed her door shut and cried herself to sleep that day, not that sleeping was much better since all she could dream about were the horrors having occurred.
She noticed how much the moment of Eddie's death replayed in her head. How much she thought if she would have done anything any different she could have saved Eddie from his ending. If she knew how to control her powers, she could have saved him.
She let him die.
Now all she knew was guilt.
➼➼➼
The next day Juniper went out through the house to view the damage done to it. It was even worse than she'd imagined, her house had literally be the center of where Vecna struck.
She went into the kitchen, nearly trembling over a piece of the island that fell down. June made a path free for her to walk through. She took the backdoor to get to the garden, where her father always used to be.
June only now noticed how boring and silent the giant house was without her mother yelling at her father through the house whenever he'd leave his weed somewhere.
In the garden was a trail of blood June might as well follow. The trail lead to the very back of the garden, behind the split tree, behind bushes, even behind the pharmacy.
The blood trail stopped in a set of dead flowers, June put the flowers to one side to see where the trail lead, but hiding in between the flowers was the missing piece of the puzzle.
Lucy's head laid in the middle of the flowers. Her once perfect hair now disheveled and her once so lively eyes now cold and dead. Like the ones she saw on Eddie yesterday.
Oh, Eddie.
She tried to silence her cries by looking away and keeping a hand against her mouth.
June didn't even call the police about the head, she didn't dare coming back in the garden.
Ever.