Lily awoke to the feeling of twigs and dead leaves as her cheek lay pressed against the earth. Her eyes peeled open to the bleak morning light, partially shielded by Skull Rock as she slowly pulled herself up into a sitting position. She looked around, expecting Eddie to still be asleep, but instead he was nowhere to be found, leaving her alone under the rock formation.

She shot out from under the rock and up to her feet as the events of the night before came rushing back; Jason, Patrick, and Andy arriving at Reefer Rick's house, hiding out in the boathouse until nightfall when she and Eddie made their escape, and Patrick's lifeless body hovering above the water right before Vecna murdered him. Lily looked around, trying to catch a glimpse of some sort of sign of Eddie's whereabouts, but she came up short, the realization settling in that she was alone.

"Eddie?" Lily's voice came out soft, barely more than a whisper in case anybody was lurking nearby, her breathing starting to get more and more rapid as she was only met with silence in response.

She knew Eddie would never leave her behind, not after everything they'd been through in the past few days. Sure, they'd gotten off to a rocky start, but after the events of the past weekend, he'd make her run away before he'd ever leave her without a word. So either he was somewhere nearby, or they were in some serious trouble.

"Eddie?" Lily called out again, a little louder. "Are you there? Eddie?"

Lily began to step back, surveying the scene around her and searching for any sign of life when she backed into a tall figure, turning around with a startled yelp to reveal Eddie standing behind her.

"Whoa, hey," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "It's okay, it's just me."

"You asshole, you scared me!" Lily scolded him. "Where'd you go?"

"Sorry," he chuckled softly, and only then did Lily's eyes land on the walkie talkie that lay in his right hand. "I didn't want to wake you, but I wanted to see if there was anything nearby that we could use to get a hold of the others. I found a construction site, and one of the workers left his belt just sitting there, so I figured we could use some new equipment."

"And it works?" Lily stepped forward, taking the device from his hands as she turned the dial slightly, hearing it crackle to life.

"Yeah, should work just fine." he assured her, grabbing the walkie talkie back from her and turning the channel to match their party's.

While fiddling with the walkie talkie, Eddie took a seat again under the rocks, and Lily followed suit. She sat down facing him, both of them sitting in silence except for the occasional crackle of the device.

"Alright, here goes nothing." Eddie murmured, pressing the button for the walkie to go over the air. "Dustin, can you hear me, Wheeler?"

Lily crossed her fingers as they both stared at the walkie expectantly, though where they'd only been met by radio silence the day before, it now crackled back to life. "Eddie, holy shit, are you guys okay?" Dustin's voice came through the speaker, worry lacing the boy's tone as they both sighed in relief.

"Nah man," Eddie chuckled humorlessly, shaking his head, and Lily pulled her knees to her chest, resting her chin on top of them as she leaned back against the rock. "Pretty goddamn far from okay."

"Where are you?" Dustin's voice came through again. "Is Lily still with you?"

"Yeah, she's here, but we're not doing so great." Eddie said. "We're at Skull Rock. Do you know it?"

"Uh, yeah," Dustin assured them. "That's near Cornwallis and-"

"Garrett, yeah," Steve's voice came over the speaker, cutting off Dustin. "I know where that is."

"Hold tight, we're coming." Dustin said. "We're coming."

Eddie turned the walkie talkie off with a sigh, burying his face in his hands before looking back up at Lily from where he sat leaning against the other edge of the rock. He looked tired, a look of terror still in his eyes in an expression she knew matched the one she currently wore, but he offered her a small smile, nudging her knee with his.

"Hey, remember that time you and I came here?" he asked, changing the subject in an attempt to lighten the mood, and she nodded, looking up at the rock formation above them with a small smile.

"How could I forget?" she asked simply.

"It was the annual Hellfire Club's bonfire night." he dramatically began to tell the story, causing her to chuckle softly in response. "Some idiot thought mixing teenagers, beer, and truth or dare was a good idea, I don't know, their Dungeon Master's kind of an idiot, but whatever."

"He has his moments." Lily added, smirking softly.

"Shh, interrupting the story, Mayfield, that's so rude." Eddie teased, bringing a finger up to his lips to playfully shush her, and she reached out an arm, batting his hand away as she began to laugh. "We weren't far from here, maybe half a mile or so, so Gareth dared me to come out here with you for ten minutes, and being the good sport you are, you agreed. So we walked out here, and I assured you that nothing had to happen. I could set the timer on my watch, we could just hang out until it went off, and then we'd go back, lie, and just tell the others we kissed. But then you told me about that phrase your sister and her friends always used to say to each other. What was that?"

"Friends don't lie." Lily said.

"Friends don't lie." Eddie repeated slowly with a sly smile. "So I set the timer, and the rest was history." he paused, his smile fading as he chose his next words carefully. "I'm sure you and McKinney used to come here all the time though, right? Isn't this the basketball team's favorite spot? Sorry, I shouldn't have brought him up, but-"

"It's okay," Lily spoke up, shaking her head. "No, actually, we didn't." she explained, causing his eyebrows to pinch slightly as he watched her, confused. "I always told Patrick that I was afraid of the woods at night, so I'd say no whenever he brought it up."

"Lily, you used to plan our camping trips, you're not scared of the woods." Eddie pointed out, but she simply nodded.

"I know that," she assured him. "You know that, but he never knew that. The truth is, I always just associated this place with you, and after last summer it didn't feel right being here with anybody else."

Eddie watched her with an expression she couldn't quite decipher as she spoke. The truth was, not only did she associate Skull Rock with that night after kissing Eddie, but it also marked the last normal night of her life, before she was asked to go pick Billy up from work at the pool and she was dragged into the middle of the mess of the Upside Down. The last night of innocence she'd never get back, no matter how hard she'd tried the past seven months.

"I'm really sorry," Eddie said finally, "about Patrick. For what it's worth, I never hated the guy. Sure, the basketball team liked to pick on me, that's nothing new, and he came looking for me yesterday with a baseball bat, but he was without a doubt the most tolerable one of them all, except Sinclair, of course."

"He was nice," she agreed. "Definitely a much less extreme version of Andy or Jason. I just wish..." she trailed off a bit, pulling her knees closer to her chest.

"Wish what?" he asked.

"I wish I'd known him better." she confessed. "I mean yeah, we were going out for a bit, we'd hang out at parties and he'd walk me to class, but we never really figured out what we were to each other. It was just easier to go along with it when people called him my boyfriend, but we never really got to that point. I knew I was leaving after graduation anyway, and that it wouldn't last, so I guess it never really mattered if he asked me to be his girlfriend or not."

Lily hadn't realized that she started crying until a salty tear landed on her tongue, and she reached up to wipe her eyes as she looked over at the greenery surrounding Skull Rock. Even with the limited time she knew they had, she'd grown to care a lot for Patrick, regardless of the future she'd known they'd never have together. He hadn't deserved to have been torn apart the way he had by Vecna, none of them had.

"And I know Vecna targets those who are going through something." Lily continued. "He and I had some sort of..." she trailed off again, searching for the right words. "...unspoken agreement, I guess. It was obvious that we both had things going on, even if we didn't know the extent of it. Nobody knows that we moved to Forest Hills, just you and the others, so for Patrick, all he knew was that I was dealing with losing Billy. I always told them I drove to parties because I didn't want them to look at me differently, when in reality, I'd either walk or take Max's skateboard. I could tell he was having some troubles at home, but I could also tell that bringing it up was only going to make things worse, so we never talked about those things. If we'd just talked about it, maybe I could've helped him, maybe it wouldn't have been him."

"Hey," Eddie spoke up, causing her to look back at where he now watched her with a determined expression. "Lily, this is not your fault. You didn't know, and if you did, there's nothing you could have done. We don't know how or why Vecna's choosing his targets, but him choosing Patrick was not on you. Do you understand me?"

She nodded, reaching up to wipe her eyes again. "I understand."

"Good," he said. "Now, our friends are on their way here with news, and then we're going to figure out how to kill this son of a bitch. And believe me when I say that we're going to make him pay for what he did to them."