"I'm okay," Eddie promised, his voice soft but steady as he threw his arms around Jamie's shoulders.

Frowning into Jamie's collar, he said, "We look out for each other. I wasn't going to just stand there while you got hurt."

He thought not of the clown, then, but of his mother and how it had felt to finally stand up for her. In that moment, long before he'd descended into the well beneath Neibolt, he'd known that he would do anything to protect his friends.

Anything to protect the people he loved.