Boltedfruit Archive

The doctor cuts.

They heal.

Again and again, a cycle of flesh splitting, blood pouring, bone cracking. Then cells divide and multiply and replace the broken with the new.

The doctor cuts.

Eddie heals.

Steve watches it happen every time. Demands it of himself to catalog every incision, every muted pained scream that’s kept from his ears behind the thick plexiglass. It’s the little he can do, when he’s strapped down and waiting his turn.

The cameras record.

The doctor cuts and Eddie heals, hair plastered to his face with sweat, bandages half-assed on open wounds that knit themselves together over long, pained hours. He’s rolled to a stop beside Steve, eyes hazy, glazed over but settled somewhere along Steve’s face.

They switch.

And the doctor cuts.

Places samples of what makes him human, makes him alive, in vials and bags and sends them to another part of the lab where they keep trinkets left over and dying from the Upside Down.

They came back different.

So the doctor cuts.

And Steve and Eddie heal, always.