Chapter Text
Edgar Curran had never particularly considered how he was going to die. He knew it was going to happen, and that it would probably be violent, but beyond that he didn’t concern himself with the why and when.
So, when he found himself sprawled on the cold cobbles of the tower, hot blood soaking through the gash in his side and blooming against the stark white of his shirt, he felt a strange, creeping calm crawl over him. When he looked heavily up into the deep hazel eyes of the man kneeling beside him, holding him, he could only find it within himself to smile.
“It’s okay, Stevie. It’s just my time to go.” Edgar whispered, breathing rattled by the clumps of clotted red liquid attempting to flee through his windpipe.
“No, no-no! You can’t do this. Not when I just found you. Not after I waited for you!” Steve’s voice was thick with grief and fear, tears bursting past the boundary of his lashes and rushing down his pale cheeks, clinging and pooling under his chin.
Edgar’s vision blurred at the sides, leaving in view only the beautiful mess of the man he loved. He wished he’d had the chance, the nerve, to say it. He couldn’t now, not now he knew there was no way out for him this time. He couldn’t leave Steve with their love story ending the moment it began. It was kinder to simply say nothing. God, he was so cold, so sore. He couldn’t feel his fingers, but he could see them clasped in Steve’s bloodied hand against his hair. It hadn’t worked. He’d been the one to make sure of that himself.
Edgar thought he heard Steve’s shaking voice again, but the ringing in his ears was growing with every uneven beat of his exhausted, emptying heart. He felt his hand thud against his thigh as Steve’s grip faltered, shaken loose by the sobs heaving through his lungs. Finally, Edgar succumbed to the heaviness that had been weighing down upon his eyelids. The ringing subsided the weaker his grip on consciousness became, and Steve’s voice cut through the haze one last time.
“Don’t leave me. I lo-”
Edgar’s heart gave one last consolatory thud, then stopped, before he heard the rest.
***
The Kingdom of Hawkins, 20 years prior.
“That’s not good enough, Captain! My wife is dying! My son…” The King’s voice cracked and splintered in his throat as he screamed, pleading with the captain, the doctor, the gods themselves, to save his family.
“We’ve looked everywhere, Your Majesty.” Captain Hopper spoke quietly, his despair laid heavily upon his crumpled brow and downturned lips. “It just doesn’t…exist.”
“It has to! I can’t…I don’t know how to-” A sob wracked through the King, flinging his words back into the depths of his aching lungs. He knelt beside the unconscious body of his wife, his large hand resting protectively over the dome of her heavily pregnant belly. The doctor had advised an emergency procedure, prioritising the baby’s life over the Queen’s.
“He is the heir to the Hawkins throne, Your Majesty. You must act in the interests of your people!” The doctor had cried, attempting to mask the frantic incredulity at the King’s almost-certainly fatal indecisiveness. “Waiting for a miracle flower that has been nought but a fairy-tale for centuries is madness, sire!”
“I will not sacrifice my wife. You must save them both.” The King had growled, resolute in his refusal to choose one over the other.
Minutes passed in quiet stillness, with only the Queen’s shallow but regular breathing keeping the King tethered down. He dared not open his eyes; the sight before him would surely drive long, sharp screws of panic between his ribs. He attempted to slow his own breathing, to calm his racing mind, cursing the images assailing the inside of his eyelids. Cracking bones, pooling blood, a tiny body lying limp and pale. These things would not come to pass. The King shook his heavy head, a dark lock of soft hair falling sympathetically down his wrinkled forehead and tangling in his wet lashes.
“There is,” Captain Hopper cleared his throat, startling the King from the gruesome display in his mind, “there is one unit that has yet to return.” Hopper stood guard near the door to the Queen’s birthing chamber, shoulders sagging under the weight of worry and his golden armour.
“Let us hope for all our sakes that they prove me wrong.” The doctor spoke grimly, positioned in a crouch at the foot of the bed.
Muffled shouts came from the sprawling palace steps, and the King snapped his aching head up, his body following clumsily after. He half-ran, half-stumbled to the open window and braced himself on the sill. A small troop of gold-clad soldiers hurried towards the palace doors, between them carrying a wooden crate. Small flushes of yellow light misted through cracks in the wood. The King’s head spun and his stomach twisted, almost sinking to his knees again as he heard the cries drawing closer.
“We found it! Make way! We found it!”
The King tore from the birthing chamber, slamming the heavy door back against the wall in his adrenaline-filled burst. He met the soldiers as they came barrelling round the corner of the dimly lit corridor, faces blotched with exertion and sweat beading from their temples.
“Quickly, men – the birthing chamber – down the hall – please, hurry-” His breaths came quick and loud, failing to draw in enough air to soothe his burning lungs. Allowing the men to pass, the King followed in desperation, returning to the room in time to witness a metal bar prying the lid from the heavy crate.
The room erupted with buttery, iridescent light. Faces glowed and hands raised to shield startled eyes. The doctor wasted no time slashing the flower from its stem – the soldiers had pulled the thing, roots and all, from the ground – and placing it with fascination into a bowl of warm water. Swirls of yellow, gold, pearlescent magic mingled and shifted, drawing out the power so gently from each petal and stamen.
The King himself rounded the bedpost and gathered his stirring wife in his arms. He helped her to sit almost upright, smoothing her sweat-soaked hair away from her face. The Queen looked up at her husband in dazzled surprise, and though she had been drained of almost all her will as a result of hours of agony and floods of pre-emptive grief, a flash of determination blistered between her lashes.
“Drink it, sweetheart. It will make you well. It will bring our boy to us.” The King murmured into his wife’s damp hair.
And it did. In the small hours before the sun rose, strong, needy cries signalled the birth of heir to the Hawkins Kingdom. A baby, all pink cheeks and tiny fingers; a prince. A prince with a shock of thick, shimmering, golden hair.
“Steven.” The Queen breathed, gazing at the mewling miracle cradled in her arms.
“Steven.” The King echoed, placing a gentle kiss at his wife’s temple, the colour now restored to her face, more vivid than was natural.
A perfect softness fell over this new, small family. A perfect moment fit only for three.
Despite the hideously early hour, arrangements were being made to celebrate the prince’s birth. A festival, a contest, a banquet. And, that coming evening every citizen, adult and child, would be invited to the palace square to release a golden lantern into the sky. A symbol of hope, a gesture of gratitude to the unseen benevolent forces that had brought the kingdom its heir.
***
Gone. Where. Need to find it. Need it.
The witch sniffed the night, tasting the air with the pointed tip of her long tongue. She tasted stone, leather, metal. She smelled sweat, petals and pollen.
Palace.
They had taken it. Stolen it. Stolen what was hers; what she had kept so carefully hidden for centuries. All that remained in its place was a frantically dug hole in the soft earth, and a shimmering of pollen that twinkled in the cool moonlight.
By the scent of leather soles on the night-damp grass, the witch followed the hasty path taken by the King’s soldiers back to the kingdom. Stalking through the darkness, her teeth bared, clawed fingers shaking, she did not cease her hunting until the sun rose. The closer to the kingdom, especially in daylight, the higher the likelihood of humans getting in her way.
She waited, lurked in the shadows and lingered, hungrily beckoning the delicious darkness.
As the night settled in full, the witch’s eye was drawn in the direction of Hawkins. Though still a few miles off, she looked on with contempt as glowing specks of light began rising into the night sky. The witch trained her hollow eyes upon the specks, which grew larger, clearer.
Lanterns. Gold. Flower.
The witch's need drove her forward, carried her the remaining miles to the kingdom. Though the sun rose, and set, and rose again in the time it took to complete her greedy journey, she did not sleep. Did not rest. While she forced herself to remain hidden, wisp-like in the shadows, the misty sun frosted the crags and crevices of the surrounding landscape. Without the magic of the flower to restore vibrancy to her fragile frame, the witch grew weak, bony and brittle.
On the second night since her power had been stolen, as dusk embraced the hope-drunk kingdom, the witch slipped unnoticed through the narrow, cobbled streets. With the itching scent of leather and metal still scratching at the depths of her desire, she stalked toward the place where the stench was strongest. As she neared, a new yet familiar perfume wafted through the cool night air. A sweet, powdery scent that burrowed in through her nostrils and sunk shimmering claws behind her squinting eyes.
Close.
At this hour, the town lay dormant, sleepy. The witch willed her sturdy boots to float noiselessly across the dappled grey stones. Small purple and gold flags waved in the soft breeze, and she did not attempt to suppress a contemptuous shudder of revulsion at the sight of a mural slathered across a tall, wide wall. The King and Queen were depicted in vivid, nauseating colour, holding between them a small child. Their smiles sickened the witch, and she dragged her eyes down to the infant. The infant whose head was framed in a cloud of shining golden hair. As dark as the rulers' hair was, the child's was bright. There was only one thing that could have birthed such devastating perfection.
Driven on by envy, by injustice and disembodied hunger, the witch approached the palace square, overlooking which, there was an elegantly carved balcony. Contorting her dusty bones and twisting her aching joints, she began to climb the palace wall, lizard-like. Pointed talons scraped and dragged as the creature traversed moss, vines and stone, limbs cracking and muttering with the exertion. Blackened lungs screaming, the witch clambered over the pillars of the balcony and approached the panelled glass doors slowly, intently. Waves of anticipation radiated from her rotting form, and she wrapped grubby, spindly fingers around the delicate handles, pulling both open wide.
In its ornate crib, the infant slept, haloed by a mass of gold. The need inside the witch blossomed like an eldritch bloom and skittered through her dusty, seething veins. They took the flower from her, perhaps she could steal part of it back. Decaying hands grasped a lock of gleaming hair, shimmering as her thin voice scratched out a tuneless incantation, unsheathed the dagger and sliced.
For a moment the need was sated. Skin tightened and bloomed with vitality, teeth flattened and whitened, creaking bones filled and straightened.
And then that moment ended. Age came crashing back down upon her, wrenching breath from her lips and setting deep, scarring wrinkles into her skin. The lock she was holding no longer glowed, was no longer golden. It was a flat, lifeless brown. Milky eyes followed in disbelief as a matching hue snaked up the strand she’d cut from the infant’s head. Do not cut it, she thought. Glancing sharply around the room, her stare fell upon the sleeping form of the King. He, who had ordered the theft of her flower. A new thought crept from the cobwebbed recesses of her consciousness.
With a triumphant, depraved grin, she grasped the child, thrust her cloak around it and stole away from the chamber. Only when she was certain her head start was comfortable enough did she let out a piercing, screeching cackle, sending it in her mind’s eye directly into the ear of the thieving King.
The witch travelled for miles under cover of night, hushing the infant’s whimpering with a twitch of her fingers. Days later, she reached the stone-bricked tower, which was nestled in a valley behind a cliff-face and surrounded by huge trees and vines and rocks. Here, she would be safe. Here, she could make use of the child. Here, she would be youth and beauty incarnate, forever.
***
Years passed, and the witch raised the tiny would-be prince as her own. She squashed down the creature and became Mother. Her need for the flower’s magic outweighed the irritation and oftentimes disgust at this bony, sometimes inexplicably sticky being that clung and clambered and cried, so she would sigh sweetly, and stroke his tears away and give him everything she told him he needed to be happy. There were times, though rare, that she considered that she did in fact care for the child's safety beyond the value of its hair. These thoughts, however, were fleeting and met with cringing shudders.
One evening, the witch decided she would shed a chore she’d been waiting to discard since the moment the boy learned to speak.
“Now you’re old enough, petal, would you like to try singing our special song for me yourself?” Mother asked gently as she settled herself in the large armchair, pulling a small stool in front of her. Steve dutifully sat down, shining hair trailing on the floor a few feet behind him. He nodded, a tiny scowl of determination creasing the skin between his dark brows.
“Alright, dear. Do you know how to start? Don’t worry, I’ll help you if you get stuck.”
Steve took a deep breath, filling his little lungs, and began to sing, his voice quiet but clear.
“Flower gleam and glow, let your power shine.
Make the clock reverse, bring back what once was mine.
Heal what has been hurt, change the fates’ design.
Save what has been lost, bring back what once was mine.
What once was mine.”
The tingling that tickled his scalp faded as he finished the incantation, though his cheeks still glowed a rosy red, flushed with heat.
“Well done, sweetheart! My special boy. Come here and give your mother a hug.”
Steve threw himself into her lap, beaming proudly as he wrapped small arms around her neck, gathering soft dark coils between his fingers. Mother placed her cold hands on either side of Steve’s ribs, which were wrapped in the soft cotton of his bedclothes.
“You must promise me, dear, that you will never sing that song for anyone but me. Only me. I am the only one you can trust to keep you safe. This gift you have is special, and it must be kept between us. Do you understand, petal?”
“I understand, Mother.” Steve murmured into the tight curls cascading around his face.
“I love you very much, dear.”
“I love you more.”
There was a pause, and if Steve had been older, if he’d known more of the world, he’d have known that she should have filled that pause. But he wasn’t. He knew nothing outside the rough touch of the tower’s stone bricks, the clatter that paint pots made as he dropped a brush into them, the sharp floral scent of his mother’s perfume. Over time, he would come to learn about the world, its dangers and wonders, but for now he was simply content with loving her more.
***
Steve was very nearly five years old when he saw the lights for the first time. Unable to sleep in anticipation of his fifth birthday, he tiptoed into the main living area of the tower. He’d never been up so late before, and the pale blue moonlight that snuck through the shutters of the archway cast scary shadows. Staying close to the wall, he sidled around the room, hair whispering softly across the day-warmed cobbles behind him, and to the wooden panels blocking closed the large opening in the side of the tower. As quietly as he could manage, he lifted the cold metal latch and carefully tugged on the handle, bathing the room in a far more comforting glow.
The valley in which the tower rested shone silvery-white against the purplish night sky, a delicate breeze rustling the very tips of the tall, shivering trees, still a great distance below the opening. Satisfied with his surveillance of the land, Steve’s huge, hazel eyes lifted toward the sky. In the distance, no more than a rough dark outline against an already dark night, there was a great, almost triangular shape. From somewhere within the shape, small splotches of light began ascending, rising through the blackness, and oh. They were bright, and bunched together at first, crowding like bees around the tip of the almost-triangle. As the seconds passed, Steve held his breath and gazed in innocent wonder at the lights as they floated up, up, up. He was transfixed. Was this what he had missed he went to bed before the moon rose? The glistening shapes swirled and danced, winking against the rich blackness of the night. Steve gazed intently, attempting to look at each one individually, to commit to memory each one's specific, though tiny shapes. His eyes strained as the minutes passed and the flickering lights spread further across the stretched canvas of night, squinting as the lights flickered and sputtered, before melting away.
Steve waited, resting on his arms, for a while longer, hoping, willing, the lights to return. His lids grew heavy and he found it harder and harder to focus on the deep horizon. Blinking furiously, he shifted on aching legs – how long had he stood, mystified by the lights? It was time to go to bed. Maybe the lights would be there tomorrow, too.
The following night, when he crept from his room to the archway once again, he found only still, stagnant sky. Confusion clouded his already-sleepy mind as he waited in case he’d come too early. No lights appeared, and Steve felt the itching sting of frustrated tears, which slipped traitorously down his burning cheeks. Having trudged back to his sparse bedroom and crawled onto the bed, he wept silently into the soft fabric of his pillow, and fell asleep curled around his blanket, hugging it to himself.
He dreamed of brown hair and green eyes, of golden circles and flickering flames.
In the morning, Steve wanted to ask his mother about the lights in the sky, but remembered that in telling her, she would discover that he’d been out of bed. It took him four more Birthday-Eve floating light displays, only seen as a result of sleeplessness and an unnameable beckoning toward the window, for his curiosity to get the better of him.
***
Now almost ten years old, Steve gathered all his courage from where it rested in the creases of his elbows, the soft palms of his hands, the soles of his feet.
“Can we go see them?” Steve asked quietly as his mother tucked the quilted blanket around his body.
“See what, petal?”
“The lights. They’re gonna happen soon, ‘cause it’s my birthday soon.”
“Lights..?” Mother questioned, dark eyebrows quirking sharply. She hesitated for a moment, considering Steve’s meaning. “Oh, you mean the stars?”
“Stars,” the word felt anticlimactic on Steve’s small tongue. “Are they stars? Why do they move?”
“Goodness you’re asking a lot of questions tonight, sweetheart! Why don’t we talk about it in the morning?” Mother pecked a short kiss on Steve’s golden locks, and swept from the room without an answer.
That night, Steve's dreams were a kaleidoscope of stars, and lanterns, and a sun with waving rays.
They did not talk about it in the morning. The flash of anger in his mother’s eyes when Steve attempted to ask again about the lights warned him off the subject for a long while. He was fourteen when he mentioned them again.
“Have you not given up on the gods-forsaken lights yet, Steve?” Mother screeched, her fury bubbling viciously, her words like spikes in his chest.
“We never talked about them! You said we would and then we didn’t! That was five years ago! You never let me go outside, you never bring anyone else here, I just want this one thing, Mother!” Steve tried fervently to prevent the rising wetness in his throat and behind his eyes from spilling out.
His mother’s frenzy dissipated as swiftly as it had formed. The sudden calmness scared him almost more than the rage. Steve watched as she reached out slowly, as if to a startled creature, and took him by the hand, leading him to the small sofa positioned near the fireplace. The age spots on her hands seemed more pronounced than they had been yesterday, Steve noticed. He allowed himself to listen as she told him of the terrifying ordeal they’d both suffered when Steve was just a baby. A band of mercenaries had accosted them, raving about the Boy with the Magic Golden Hair. They’d overpowered his mother and threatened to take Steve from her, but when they sheared a blade through a small strand at his temple, the gold faded like water drying on rock, leaving dull brown in its place. Taking advantage of the would-be thieves’ momentary shock, Mother had clutched Steve to her and run, as far away as she could. She ran, and ran, until she came upon the tower.
“I swore to myself, and to you, that day, that I would never let anyone try to harm you again. I know you think I’ve been a monster, keeping you here. But it’s only because I love you so very much, my petal.”
He sung for her, after, and she brushed through the loose waves of his ever-growing hair as it glowed and refracted in the candlelight. When she set the brush down lightly and sighed, Steve turned to face her. She looked like herself again; the crow’s feet had melted into soft, supple skin, lips plumped and pink, hair returned to a shocking, coiling black. A tiny surge of pride swelled apprehensively like music in Steve's chest - he had done that for her.
They spoke very little for the rest of the evening, both seemingly lost in thought. Steve felt guilt raking his stomach. She had been through so much to protect him, and he had thrown it all back in her face. How ungrateful he’d been.
As Steve fell asleep amongst the swirls and shades and shapes that adorned the walls of his bedroom, he felt a strange sense of relief washing through him that the short, brunette strand he kept hidden, tucked behind his ear, was a remnant of tragedy avoided. He had always thought there had just been something wrong with that part of him.
For the first time in years, Steve dreamed again of a shining sun, shimmering gold and purple, casting gleaming shards of coloured light over jewelled metal.