#I actually really enjoy this chapter but it definitely has my trademark stream of consciousness messiness.

[formosusiniquis]

“Try again.” Steve orders.

Sweat is pouring down Eddie’s face. He’s reaching for something, he thinks, some power that is supposed to live in him. Channeling it feels like trying to summon his liver or kidney. He’s reaching for something that is supposed to exist in him innately. And he’s having as much luck forcing that power as he could trying to get his stomach to digest faster.

But they keep trying. Hour after hour, day after day. He comes and he meets Steve in the empty throne room. He goes and he fails again and again and again to find anything that so much as hints at the spark they insist is there.

Make the ball stop, make the shirt move, alright fine just try to stop yourself from falling. Not like that, like this. It’s easy Eddie, are you even trying? Fine, no it’s fine, something easier. Change your form. Change your face. Change your eye color. Can you at least change your goddamn hair? No, sorry, sorry. Something easier. Something easier. Something easier.

Steve flicks his wrist and another new orb appears. They stack in the corner like dewdrops on a door frame spiderweb. Something easier. Steve creates something from nothing. Something easier. He doesn’t remember much from science, but he knows you can’t make something from nothing. Something easier. Breaking the very laws of physics.

It’s one of the first things Steve learned how to do. Just make the orb. Just make the orb. Just leave. We don’t need this. We need more. We need to take from this place.

“Just try. It’s kids stuff.”

We hunger. Hit him, draw blood.

“I am trying,” he bites out. Teeth catching his hunger, the blood lust.

“It should come from your chest. Draw out the want.” A hand tossed up into the air sends a toddler’s bubble wand's worth of crystalline spheres floating all around them.

He wants. He wants . What is hunger but want? Visceral and primal.

They've been at this so long he doesn't know what day it should be anymore. He has been reaching. Has reached. If he tried any harder he would have his intestines in his hand. They would burble and gurgle in his fists, starved and wanting. Something physical to show Steve that it is not a lack of want keeping him from making that shitfucking orb.

The deeper he reaches the more he wants. Deeper and deeper until the hive singing chorus of his wants filters down into a singular voice again.

Take. Take. Take.

Eddie flicks his wrist again an easy, though less graceful, mimicry of a gesture he’s seen too many times. He might as well be jerking off the air for all it produces.

Just do something. Anything. You have to want it. If you don’t want it enough you’ll never be able to do anything more powerful.

The threat hangs unsaid over top of them.

“I’m trying.” It feels like the only thing he’s capable of saying. Straining to find a muscle that doesn’t exist, sweating while standing still. The flouncy shirt that has become his uniform here sticking to the small of his back, bangs stringy and sticking to his forehead.

“Try harder,” Steve insists. Eddie can see his mouth continue to move but whatever he was saying gets drowned out by the too fast thumping of his heartbeat in his ears.

You’re better than he is , the voice Eddie dug so deep to find says. It doesn’t sound like himself but maybe it’s the real him. Maybe he should have listened a little closer to Dustin’s half-assed attempts at psychoanalysis.

He needs you , it says, he can’t do this without you. All this place knows how to do is wait and wish and steal from the people who have the power to do actual things. 

Steve is watching him, the hand of his good arm on one hip, brow raised in kingly expectation. Waiting for Eddie to do something. Answer a question he didn’t hear or to continue failing at the impossible task that had been set for him.

He isn’t sure he has powers. But he knows what someone looks like when they want to take. When they want to seal a moment to laugh or mock

“I’m done,” Eddie says. His whispering Id is cheering him on as he drops his arms to his sides, the cold, damp of his shirt under his arms the only real sign he has for how long he’s been holding them there.

Steve nods, something relaxing in his face. “You’re right, let’s take a break.”

“No. Not a break. I’m done. ”

“Done? What does that even mean done? It’s still, well mid-afternoon isn’t early but it’s too early to just leave. We’ll break from lunch and then get back to it.”

Take and take and take. Your time, your energy, your free will. That is the problem with the wishers, they take from the willful and think they are powerful.

“No, Steve. I’m done. I’m leaving.”

They’ve maintained a careful professorial distance during these lessons. Steve never comes as close as he did the first time when he stopped Eddie from falling. But he steps closer now, face screwed up in something Eddie can only assume is anger as he opens his mouth to no doubt say some bullshit that we’ll force Eddie to stay here and keep working. To keep trying. As he takes and takes and takes more time and more of his will to resist, to get home.

“ Stop.” The command leaves him with a force he has had trouble finding in this miserable place. Powerful enough to freeze a king in his tracks. And Eddie doesn’t want to wait and see what Steve will do when he snaps out of it. Doesn’t want to hear whatever spell he’s going to cast in revenge.

Get out. Go deeper into the labyrinth. You’ll find something there that you can use against him later.

He doesn’t think. Just listens to that voice that feels so entwined around him. He turns and runs, knowing from experience that whatever creature he may stumble on in the maze will be less trouble than their king.

Read the rest on AO3