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Chapter Text

25, October 1984

It is as if something walked across her grave, she thinks, lips twitching in morbidity at the thought. It is a persistent thought that has lingered in Sansa Mayfield's head since the second she stepped into the boundaries of Hawkins, Indiana.

And she cannot dispel it. 

Once, it had been a bad habit of hers to ignore the sensation. Any lingering doubt was supposed to be only her own self-doubt. 

Now, she does not doubt herself.

Being in Hawkins felt as if someone was atop her grave, lingering above her corpse and giving her the instinct that something was wrong . 

As of a girl of House Stark in another life, she did undoubtedly have a grave. A grand one, mayhaps, with a crown upon its brow for the armies she had led and the evil she had stood in defiance against. A statue she thinks, with the Pup of Lady beside her, and perhaps a little bird in her palm. She hummed at the pleasant thought. Already she was imagining the lines of a song in her head, a song of her own grave. A ballad to the Stark Queen she had been. The melody was easy, a mixture of Northern drums, Vale Flutes, and soft Riverland strings.

Hail the Queen of Three, she thinks. It was a grim tribute.

But Hawkins felt grim, to her, despite the cheery Halloween decorations and the festive air.

There is something here, she knows it in the marrow of her new bones. Something dark, something evil.  She can taste… Rot. And something with teeth in the back of her mind. She shudders slightly. It isn’t like anything she has ever felt in this life. And she has become very sensitive to various things in this new life.  

Max hit her shoulder with her own, startling her from the gaze out their new living room window and the possible danger that lurked. A burst of happiness-hope-excitment rushes through Sansa. Max was one of the few people she could stand to touch, her emotions felt muted in comparison to others. Her sister, twin , hair like brilliant copper and wavy against Sansa’s straight and darker hair, was innocent and blue-eyed. Her eyes were not Tully deep, but light and beautiful as summer skies. Their features were not identical, for Sansa looked like the woman she had once been in a lot of ways. Their similarities lay in their forms. Lanky, barely budding children going through puberty. 

Max grinned at her. 

Her sullen demeanor at the move had slowly shifted as the landscape across the country had. Her Colors had been steadily more sunny, brilliant hues of yellows, white, and blue. Now, it was soft, pale blue in curiosity, a pale yellow in happiness.

The soft white-like bone that was hope.

Something in Sansa, despite herself, gentles at the sight.

For a girl with dead magic in one life, Sansa had never expected that magic in the next would burst from within her. It was a simple, soft sort of magic, but then, Sansa was always soft and in ways, simple. Her wants had always been simple, at least. Comfort. Love. She saw the emotions of others in colors hovering around their skin, nothing grand as slipping into animals' bodies or seeing the future. She would have wanted this skill in her first life, mayhaps she would have seen the darkness in the people who abused her so much sooner. She had to learn in her past life to see evil in actions, past facades of goodness and beauty, in this life, she saw it all too clearly through her magic.

She was glad of it.

She was glad to be better prepared for anything that may come for those she loved. 

“It seems nice here,” her sister whispered. Her lovely eyes flickered warily to their elder brother.

Max was enchanted by the dark forest, by the actual changed leaves of their boroughs. Amber, brown, and yellow. The cold had made her twin wonder. The thought of new friends excited her, much as Max tried to act sullen, as her own friends in California had… They have been few and far between. Fickle, mayhaps Sansa would dare to say. She still was angry at the boy who had disregarded Max’s friendship for an accident.  

But it was Billy who had taken the move the hardest outwardly. He had friends( lovers, Sansa knew ), and he had plans for the summer and college that had turned to ash. Being out of state meant that his plans for any state college had been thrown out the window. Any local jobs he had lined up had been dashed, and he would have to compete with locals for any position he thought to join. Sports, employment… 

He had lost everything that centered him, save for Max and herself.

Even now, he stood, legs apart, planted, hands on his hips, knuckle white, chewing relentlessly at a piece of nicotine gum. His profile was soft and golden in the setting sun, she could see he was upset, even without the focus on his Colors.  Max mourned the loss of contact with their biological father, and Sansa- She missed the warmth of the sun. When you die on a moonless night, in a cold as devastating as she had, it was the warmth she craved. This town made her feel as if someone stood atop where her body lay to rest, where she felt a wrongness in the air and made her feel cold. 

She missed Los Angeles. 

She missed their smaller house thirty minutes from the beach. She missed the sound of the sea, the sun, the air that felt like an eternal bliss of Summer.  But she couldn't change the decision that their step-father had taken for them. Even the move from San Diego to Los Angeles when she first joined the Hargrove household had seemed drastic. This move, states away, felt even more so. She nudges her sister's shoulder back. Sparks of hope-excitement-joy fill her. Perhaps it was because they shared a womb that Max eased her, no matter her own mood, perhaps it was because they were twins. She let’s Max’s shoulder linger on her’s for a moment. Then she slips forward to stand next to Billy. He twitches. His blue eyes look at her from the corner of his sight.

His dark eyes are closer to her own.  

She doesn't reach for him. She wished she could. 

But his Colors are dark violet of displeasure mixed with his usual constant anger in dark mulled red. Touching him would make him pull away. Perhaps destroy a nearby object. Billy didn’t receive physical affection easily, often, or without his own reach. It was a by-product of the abuse that their monster of a Patriarch heaped upon him. Yet, she lingers with him. Stands with him in the last vestige of the autumn sun. She waits beside him. Close enough that he could breach the distance when he is ready.

Sansa has always been patient when it comes to the people she loves. 

Even when it hurts her. 

He is too raw at the moment for direct contact, she knows. If anyone in their house disliked touch more than her, it was Billy. He was taking in the sight of the smallness and seeming tranquility of Hawkins, Indiana and it made something in him writhe. He was comparing it all to the sunlight sands of Los Angeles, the urban sprawl of their home, and he found it wanting. 

She did too. She found it unsettling. The trees. The smallness of it all. The start of the cold that touched like first upon the air.

It was too much like Westeros. It was like the North. She hated the reminder, even if her memories of the North were soft, save her death because she wanted to focus on her new life. Selfish? But once she had focused solely on the legacy of her kin, and she had suffered for it. She is no longer a Stark, and Sansa would relish it. She could not linger on the past now.  Not when she had true peace and pack that loved her .  His mulled red shifts after a few minutes. She hums. He hums back. A whisper of a Riverland lullaby she sang to him when they were younger. It is a soft thing between them.

His Colors leeche to a softer hues. A mid hue of blue of patience. 

The dark mulled red remains. 

It always had.

“There is an indoor pool a town over,” she informs him, softly, “Nearly the same distance from here to the beach at home.”

Back in California. Their sun-filled home. Sansa is already cold. She longs for California. She avoided the cold for so long in this new life. Now it was Autumn. And Winter was Coming . And here she is, a wolf-pup in a place of evil. 

She holds back a shudder. 

There is darkness here. There is evil. It is cold. She is afraid of it all. 

Her brother blinks. Pale yellow creeps into his Colors. 

“How the hell do you know that? We've been here a day, Ankle-Biter,” his voice is a touch of a rasp. The cigarettes had done that. He promised to quit. For her. He was not quite succeeding. He smoked the plant he liked more as a compromise. She accepted it. At least the plant did not have all those awful chemicals…  

She smiles at her brother. Ankle Biter indeed. The moniker came from the fact that she had bitten him viciously once in defense of Max when they had first met. A line of respect had been won that day, especially when she had twisted like Arya had taught her, pinned him with her scrawny body, and screamed in his face that she would kill him if he dared to attack her sister again. She was soft, she knew. She was always soft and polite. 

A lady’s Courtsiess was her armor.

And as Arya had taught her, a lady’s actions could be actual weapons.

So.

Respect . 

Billy understood a line was drawn that day that she and Max were not to become extensions of what Neil did to him.

His own self horror at his actions- Sansa had seen it that day. Glaring above him, she had watched it leach into his Colors. And that had softened in her that the realization of his actions was unconscious, without real want on his part. She saw his self-loathing. His anger and vileness simply being centered on himself.

The girl she had been-

She could have been just like him, twisted to be like Cersei if she was not careful. 

Sansa had been gentle since. She was reminded of Sweet Robin. Billy had time. Time to grow from it. She would always rather be loved than feared, after all. 

So that wary respect had shifted into a cat-like affection over the years. Billy was complicated. Complicated and difficult. He was arrogant. Egotistical. Vain. Prone to violence. She loved him so much, however. How could she not? Not when she saw he had been beaten as he had? How could she not, when he too, had turned to anger for it? Not when his hands could be so gentle to that which he loved when he forgot his anger. Not when his violence became so pointed when he defended the people he loved. Not when she saw how vulnerable, truly hurt he was as a person.

She had been like that once.

And she never wished to turn her back on people who needed her. 

She loved him, her mother, and Max so much she felt like she could die from it at times. This family was everything to her in this gentle new world. And she would gladly suffer from the cold if it meant she was with them. 

“I asked our neighbor. She also mentioned that a boy named Eddie Munson sells the plant you enjoy and stays away from him as good Christian children. Ms. Marshall was quite informative.”

“Oh quite,” he snorts. 

And because he knows she will squawk in protest, he ruffles her intricately made braid. She does her part, and squawks in offense. He grips her in a headlock that is gentle, and loose, mostly an embrace that he will never admit. She gets love-anger-softnesss-mourning. She leans against him. His scent is Irish Soap and the plant, a touch of tobacco, and the oil she mixes for their hair. Lemon and roses. His head presses against hers. His hand is careful at the nape of her neck, drifting down to squeeze her shoulders in a loose ring. 

He knows how twitchy she can get if someone attempts to grip her neck for more than a few seconds. He had seen her faint the only time he had attempted a true headlock. Seen her go pale and shake like a leaf. Gasp and wheeze as if she was dying. He had looked so stricken that day, staring at her form beneath him, as she had sobbed and grasped at her heart to be sure that it still beat true and well.

She had died strangled, after all. 

With beautiful, glowing blue eyes glaring down at her, even as she watched Arya twist the knife deeper into the Night King’s breast with a helpless snarl of her own.

He had broken her windpipe.

She had suffocated, gasping for air that could not pass as Arya had screamed desperately for help.   

Billy thinks her biological father did it to her. It was one reason he hadn’t made his vicious refusal known to their parents when Niel had said it was for a fresh start away from her biological father. With the beatings that Neil subjected him to, she does not begrudge him the thought. Her biological father was many things, but kind was not one of them as much as it hurt for her to think. He hadn't hurt her or Max, but he had hurt their Mother. It makes her sorrowful that her mother had not taken that lesson and applied it to her new husband, she saw the way he treated Billy and accepted it as long as it didn’t extend to her or her own flesh daughters. 

At least her mother's lapse in judgment had given her Billy. She was grateful for that unlearned lesson in that sense.

She wished she could get rid of Niel, but without him, Billy would go. And that was unacceptable. Another year. Another year and Billy would be eighteen. And then Sansa would act. 

“You got the local weed hookup in less than an hour of being here?”

“People trust me and tell me things. It's my eyes.”

She made her eyes wide, sweet, and pliant as she once had as Alyane and Cersei’s sweet broken dove. He laughed. Ruffled her hair again. He stepped away, shoulders rolling.

Like a cat, she thinks, amused despite herself. 

“Good. I’ll hit this Munson guy as soon as I can. Anyone gives you shit by the way?” he drawls, and his smile twitches, “Like in fucking school and stuff? You come to me, Ankle-Biter. These fucking hilly billy fucks are gonna try to give you shit. Smartass that you are.”

She shrugs her delicate shoulders. He was referring to her advanced intellect. Hard not to be as intelligent as she was when once she had run a kingdom at six and ten and until her death at twenty-five. Though some subjects could become quite complicated for her as someone learning specific contexts, she had once been raised to rule. She, in this life, refused to temper herself. She would never again cow behind a facade as a means of protection. 

She was not in danger. Not in that way. So Sansa was her truest self, always. 

“I will be in some classes in your school. Mother has arranged it. I will be fine. I was fine in Los Angeles, you took care of me.”

He frowns. Ducks his head in a swift moment of embarrassment. He tried to hide his proud smile, the viciousness of it. He looked back outside. 

His Colors are the pure gold of pride, and the sweet pink color of love, all touched with his always-present anger.

“Fucking smart Alec,” he tells her with another ruffle of her hair.

His strong, calloused hand cupped her face, just for a moment.  

“We got it, Billy,” Max says, and she grips Sansa’s hand, swinging it between them, “Nothing’s going to happen to Sansa between the two of us.”

No one can protect me, Sansa thinks, looking out again at the seemingly peaceful town.

But, then, she did not want anyone to.

She wished to protect everyone instead. 

Chapter Text

“Please?” Max begs.

Sansa carefully arranges her skirt, sweater, blouse, and boots for the next day. Wool skirt, neutral and a warm brown. Her sweater was bright red(not Lannister, but the color of Tully’s mud ), an ode to Princess Diane’s black sheep sweater, instead depicting her family’s direwolves, Ghost the odd one out, knitted by her patient hand.

 It had taken her nearly three years to get the right pattern, and she had missed her grandmother’s loom in Winterfell with a fierceness she could not convey. But she had tried her damnedest after she had seen the pictures of the Princess of Wales. Her blouse was a soft cream, and the tie around her Peter Pan collar was black, as was her headband. Her boots were a dark, rich, and buttery brown leather that matched her backpack perfectly. She smiled at the pressed clothing atop the trunk at the bottom of her twin bed.

Cute, fashion-forward, and it would set her apart.

She had learned in this new world that once you were singular, you needed to follow that trend without breaking your stride. Confidence was key in this world. And Sansa could fake that well enough. Even in a new school, new… Well, not peers. She was the youngest student in Hawkins High by a mile. As a junior, she was not… Well. Being thirteen was going to make waves, she suspects, especially since she would remain thirteen until she was a senior. But she is used to whispers and derision. She was once a hostage in an enemy keep, twice over. She had led armies to retrieve her homeland and defend against an Ancient evil. High School? Even as a nerd of the highest order?

That, as Max says often, was a piece of cake.    

“I don’t like being around strangers,” she reminds her sister, “I get enough of that at school. You can go to the arcade without me. Plus, I wish to finish my costume.” 

From their thin walls, she hears a bark of Billy’s laugh. 

“I told you!” he called through the walls.

“Billy’s being an asshole, ignore him. I want you there. Please? It’s our last day before we’re back in school! Freedom, games!?”

Max’s Colors were the vermillion of coyness, pale yellow of joy as she tried to convince her.  

“I’m always an asshole!” Billy croons out, not missing a beat. He slaps at the walls. The beat is a Northern Drums, a dancing beat she had taught him. She smiles slightly at the sound. 

“NOT TO SANSA!” Max screeches back. She slaps back more of the song.

Sansa hums along. 

They play it at each other. It makes Sansa laugh. Max grins at her, and tosses herself forward on Sansa’s neatly made bed.

“Pleeeeeeeeeeeease?”

“Must I?” she asks her sister again. 

“Dig Dug is calling my name, I have to show the kids in this town who is the best. You can try that dragon game again. Billy will buy us pizza.”

Sansa sighs. She does love pizza. The richness of the food was marvelous. Such casual opulence was such a boon to this new world of hers. She finds it wondrous, even if the trade of such produce has caused repercussions throughout societies of the world. It reminds her of the slaughter of the Children.

She is saddened by the reflection of such a similar history.   

“I repeat to say that the ‘gown’ that Princess Daphne wears is wholly impractical. The back alone-”

“I don’t think that’s what the game designers had in mind,” Max reminded her gently. 

Sansa hummed.

“Must I?”

“You must,” Max says, simply. Grinning wide.

Her Colors and yellow, bright, and happy. 

They are what she always wishes for her family.   

And it was hard to deny her twin anything. Once, their differences would have driven them apart. If Sansa did not remember the lonely Stark Queen, she knew she and Max would be less close. But she did remember a Stark Queen, she remembered that letting petty differences drive her apart family made it so easy for people to tear them apart. And she also remembered it was Arya who had been at her side as she died. She remembered her sobs, she who had taken the mantle of No One. Who had not shed a tear until Sansa Stark died. 

Max is like her younger sister of another life. On the less obedient side, more physical and less inclined to feminine pursuits, but does not make Sansa envy her as she once had against Arya. She could not envy her. Not knowing what she did. She just loved her, unconditionally. 

“Alright. But only if you help me finish the last of the stitches of my costume. The gown is nearly perfect. ”

Max groaned good-naturedly, her grin hitching up.

“Deal.”

“And Hawaiian.”

Max faked a gag. 

In the room next to them, Billy cackled again. He loved Hawaiian as much as she did.

“Outnumbered,” Sansa all but sang. 

“You guys suck.”

“You’re making me socialize. There are consequences.”

“Fine!” 

Sansa smiles. 

Sansa is frowning. 

Max is grinning ear to ear. Her color is brilliant gold of pride. 

“It's awful,” she tells her twin, seriously.

Max takes a large obnoxious bite of her pizza. 

“We’re in Hick's vile, Sansa,” Billy takes a no less obnoxious bite of his pizza. 

“But pineapple is delicious. ”

He sighs. Places a gentle knuckle against her shoulder. Sparks of disappointment-anger C olors through her. His Colors reflect this. Grey and mulled red are prominent.  

“I know Ankle-biter.”

Mournfully, she eats her Supreme slice. She likes it, but the fact that Hawaiian isn’t even an option makes her feel sad. 

She feels eyes on them. 

She is not surprised. They are unfamiliar faces, Billy is an arresting sight to those attracted to men. Red hair, she also found, is rare in this world. She and Max are beautiful children. Turning into young women themselves. The thought makes her skin crawl. Part of her wished she had not inherited the same features as her last life. A life where she was once called one of the most beautiful women in the world. 

The attention- the sexual attention she would receive in this life was looming in her mind. She hated it. She does not relish the attention such a fate brings her. She is worried for Max, beautiful and fair as well, going through the gauntlet that all women suffer through.  

“I demolished in Dig Dug,” Max crows, shinning gold, a mouthful of pizza, “And mostly everything else worth it in the Arcade. MAD MAX reigns supreme! Like our delicious pizza.”

Billy ruffles her hair, a touch rougher than he would with her. Max leans into the touch, even as she squawks in offense. She tries to bite his hand and he dodges out of the way. 

“I got stuck at the bat again,” Sansa sighs.

“That bites, Sansa,” says Max, patting her hand. 

“Anything fun for you, Billy?”

He shrugs.

“Local pool looks good for the summer, New mall opening up, and maybe some fucking dive bar.”

“The roads look fun to drive through,” Sansa says. 

Billy squinted. 

Sansa blinked innocently.

“Never a fucking again, Ankle Biter.”

She grinned with teeth. She was a she-wolf, after all.

“You're the one that let me drive.”

“You nearly fucked my back axle.”

“You dared her to do a doughnut , Billy,” Max says, blithe.

He snorts. 

Jabs at her cheek.

“And you're the one that screamed faster, Shit-Bird. Hence why my axel nearly tore itself apart.” 

“I will say that I am an excellent driver.” She tells him, bluntly. 

“Just don't drive my car.”

“Are you encouraging me to steal mother's?”

“Naw,” he drawls, “Maybe this decent BMW I saw in the lot of some burger joint.”

“I bet I could hotwire it. The best taught me.”

Billy shrugs. Yet his chest and Colors puff out in golden pride. Most of her… less favorable skills in this life were Billy's teaching. If one thing she had learned from her Stark life, was that any skill, no matter how unsavory, could save your life. Arya had made that clear when she taught her defense. 

“We don't need to do that anymore, Ankle-Biter. We got our own wheels.”

She smiled. 

“So I can drive it.”

Billy jabbed Sansa’s cheek. His Colors were- they were softer. Blush Pink. Love. Just a touch yellow for joy, and his undercurrent of constant anger. 

“When you get your permit, Ankle-Biter.”

She grins widely. 

“I’ll hold you to that!”

“Wait, can I drive it then-”

“Absolutely fucking not,” Billy snaps, “You fucked my bumper and cost me like a hundred fucking dollars. ”

“Awww! I’m a good driver!”

“No, you’re not,” Sansa replies, gently, patting her hand.

Sparks of grey disappointment, and the stubborn bruise blue float through her. 

“I’m an excellent driver!”

“Fuck up Susan’s car, not mine.”

“You both suck.”

Chapter Text

TRIGGER WARNING: PERIOD TYPICAL HOMOPHOBIA. INTERNALIZED HOMOPHOBIA. USE OF SLURS. 

Ankle-Biter is nervous. 

She's hovering half a step too near him, their schedules in her hand, looking straight ahead as Hawkins High stares at them. Chin parallel to the ground, a fighter's ready posture. Her fencing showed in her every gesture, and every movement, especially when Sansa was nervous. The sport had taught her to be still, with a graceful posture that could move like lightning. He remembers a coach calling her a ‘Tiny Dancer’ Mayfield, like the Elton John song, she was that graceful. The nickname had stuck, and he remembers her team scribbling that on all her farewell cards. The fencing team had been some of the few friends that Sansa had held, and they’re had been a lot of tearful farewells on that score, and promises to write to each other.   

Billy is nearly amused by the fact that he realizes that Sansa is nervous.

Nearly. Because he thinks he can count on one hand the times that he's realized in a given situation that Sansa had been nervous. It had taken him that long to see past the various masks his littlest sister can form when she is in distress because she’s good, at faking. It’s one of the reasons that Billy tries to keep an eye on her the most, especially since they share school grounds. 

Max is a different form of tenacity. Shit-bird generally didn't give a fuck, she was savagely independent from social bullshit in a way Billy sometimes wished he could be. She was often getting into shit she couldn’t handle trying to prove herself, however. He often had to try to hold her back so she wouldn’t break her stupid neck. Sansa, on the hand, is a great actress that felt every little shit people threw at her and was too damn good at hiding it. She was a better actress even than Billy, at presenting herself in a way that would make everyone around them happy, or at the very least, not look too closely at how she actually was. 

And in this instant, she’s head up, gaze firm. She’s projecting she’s going to be alright, even though the words of freak and nerd have chased after her all her life. He expects it will start to make the rounds soon enough, a junior girl not even fourteen years old, a tall bird-like kid that was barely a hundred pounds soaking wet and that could run a mental circle around most of the teenagers in her class.  

She’s too damn smart. 

He knows it. She knows it. She is afraid of people. She has been since she was a kid. He sees it in a way she… Look at everything.  He wished, sometimes, that she wouldn’t… Wound’t show how smart she is. Her Dad already gave her shit for it he knows. So had his, and fucking Susan. But Sansa only held her head higher and tried harder at school with a determination no one would expect from the soft-spoken kid. 

“You look fine,” he snips.

Her hands had been running down her skirt again and again as if she was trying to straighten it. As if it wasn’t already ironed flat and perfect. Her hands are still. 

Sansa knew like he did, that appearance made or broke you. Sansa didn't break. He saw her bend. Warp with pressure. 

Sansa didn't fucking break.

Billy fucking envies her for it. He always has. Seeing the way she tackles problems made him feel stupid, and weak more than once. Most nerds weren't socially aware. Sansa was so socially aware he knew she could be top of any food chain if she wanted to. She turned to him, a small, placid smile appearing on her face. Sansa didn’t want to rule the school. She just wanted to sit on the social edges, untouched, until she was in college. He tried not to think of the brochures pilled on his dresser drawer, with excellent athletic scholarships from universities near Hawkins. Or the fact that Sansa was thinking that far ahead. 

“There’s a disgraced Homecoming King, Senior,” she chirps, lifting her schedule, she smiles, sweet and placid, “A shift in the social scene due to some sort of scandal last year. The top kid in town by default is Tommy H with the freckles... You can take him, easily. He seems to be better suited as a lap dog than anything else.”

He huffs. 

She's deliberately changing the subject. Dangling something he wants. Social dominance. Enough to keep his piece of shit old man off his back. He hates it sometimes. That Sansa never flinches, never stumbles in front of him. 

He- He wants to make sure she's okay. These bumfuck hicks could hurt her. She always seems a step ahead of him. Always trying to show that she’s the one that helps him, not the other way around. 

“Ankle-”

“Their Keg stand record is forty seconds? I think it's the same person that was displaced. It was Steve the Hair. Steve the King.”

“Fucking ain't shit,” he spits, automatically. 

Sansa smiles wider. With her slightly pronounced canines showing. 

“Halloween party. A girl named Tina is throwing it.”

She slips him-

An invitation. 

He blinks.

“For fucks sake Ankle-Biter we haven't even gotten to homeroom.” 

She had been in the restroom for a minute.

He stares at the flier. Snorts at the bad pun. 

“How many people did she invite?”

“She said everyone who’s everyone in the school will be there.”

He squints at her. 

“You aren't going.”

Sansa hums. She looks at him with an eye roll. Cheeky bitch. 

“All those people in a mob? Vivations and horrible music? Of course not, Billy. I got it for the ‘certified hottie California surfer boy’. I'm trick or treating with Max, this will probably be the last year it's socially acceptable considering I will be finishing high school, and Max will start it next year.”

He snorts. 

“Good job, anyway Ankle-Biter. This Tina chick give you trouble?”

Sansa simply smiles again. Billy fucking hates this place. He’s edging on a maybe then, that she said something cunty when Sansa got the invitation. Something snide until she brought him up. Or maybe insulting the preppy look that she gravitates toward.  He can’t tell. He’s going to fuck up something antique or expensive in the bitch’s house either way. He hates small minded assholes with a vicious anger that makes him want to scream. Because Sansa gets so much fucking shit for being as smart as she is, for being as young as she is, and sharing classes with juniors and seniors. Especially these backward fuck that didn’t know a decent slice of fucking pizza when they saw it. Whose whole town smelled like actual fucking shit. 

But at least Max and Sansa were away from him . He looks at their schedules, looking down at their shared map. 

“We share homeroom-  gym, statistics, and English four,” she says simply. That is what makes Sansa twitch, “There's no local fencing team. But the coach was nice enough to let me practice during the athletics period with you.”

First few periods. Fuck. He wishes he was smarter. A lot of Sansa's subjects are advanced, and he can see looking at her subjects that she’s taking college prep classes in her better subjects.  

He-

He wants to reassure her. His automatic gesture of affection was this thing his dad did- use to grip gently at the back of the neck. He half reaches. Stops. 

He couldn't do that with Sansa. 

Fucking her piece of shit Dad had hurt her. 

He will never forget how she got that day when she was nine and they were fighting.  Never forget the girl who could take a punch to the stomach from someone nearly twice her height, and weight, and come out swinging, had frozen like that. Crumbled underneath his palm-

Billy tried to never do that to her, ever again. Billy had also made plans. Involving a midnight drive along part of California's interstate highway on the ocean side the second he got a license. 

The move had stopped him. For now. 

Touch was… Hard for Sansa. Only Max could touch her without warning and not bother her. It was hard for him too. But the older he got, the more he realized that- Sansa tried for him. Little things. Little things that showed him that this Ankle-Biter fucking gave a shit about him. Stood near him when he was furious, waited. Quietly, until he was calm enough to realize he needed her. Mixed him some oil shit that gave him volume, and the best fucking shine to his curls. Embroidered his clothes with sweet, curious designs because she was a fucking weirdo like that. He swallowed. Pressed a hand carefully at the round part of her shoulder. Away from her neck.

She relaxed. Just a little. He found that win. She smiled. Softly. 

“You in orchestra again?”

She wrinkles her nose.

“They don't have it. Just band. I was on the fence if I should join.”

“Fucking hicks,” he spits. 

She hums. Not quite in agreement. Sansa wouldn't. 

He nearly freezes when he sees him. Clocks him.

Hello, pretty one. Yuppie in the making. His fucking hair . No wonder it's his fucking nickname. He bets his fucking wheels that that pretty boy is the fucking King. Stevo. Stevie. Steve.  Billy twitches. A surge of lust hit him. He imagines tugging that damn hair, imagines those lips on his. Sansa clocks him. She always does. She hums. 

“He must be the King,” her voice is flat. Her gaze is sharp, blue eyes glittering with something close to disgust. 

Sansa didn't like pretty boys. Not people on the top of the food chain. Or ex-tops, as it were. But Billy did. He knew it. She did too. Sansa had never batted an eye. She thinks him being a- being bisexual is nothing. She doesn’t give a fuck that he’s half-faggot. He swallows, shaking slightly at the very visceral reaction of the pretty boy. Steve of Hawkins High was all of his male boxes, double-checked, and he fucking hated him on sight because of it.

He smiles, with teeth, as he passes by him, an extra bit of strut to him despite himself, even as he wraps his arm around some weedy and mousy looking girl next to him.  

“Status?” he drawls. His voice rasps. 

Sansa raises a brow. He gives a mortified shrug. 

“Captain of Basketball, captain of the Swim team. He has a girlfriend a year below him. Rumor has it Nancy was toying with another suitor. His brother went missing last year, Jonathan 'The Freak' Byers. He took pictures the King and Nancy in an… intimate moment. Tina told me to stay away from him,” she hisses.

He looks at her. 

Her blue eyes are icy. 

“He gets near you with his camera and I'll fucking wreck him. In fact, I suspect some funny things are gonna be shitty for this Freak Perv.”

Sansa tilts her head.

“Thank you, Billy. And don’t be obvious.”

He presses a gentle fist against her clenched jaw. It flexes softly. Relaxes softly. 

He suppresses a smile. 

“Whatever Ankle-Biter.”

Sansa expects social isolation.

It had been the norm, really, in Los Angeles. Advanced classes, an advanced girl surrounded by teenagers, from a poorer household?  

She is a ‘child’ to the people around her.

She expects it to be no different here in Hawkins. While she can charm most people on a superficial level, she has never been good at making intimate, true friends. She lacks- She lacks in that area, always. She sits in homeroom, Billy looking around them with roving, calculated eyes. The boy next to her- his leg is bouncing. Next to him, Sansa realizes he has an instrument case. Electric guitar. His fingertips tap impatiently at the desk in front of him and Sansa recognizes the melody. 

A smile comes to her.

She taps the song as well. More out of a pleasant surprise than anything. 

The boy stops his beat. He turns to her and his eyes are brown, sweet, and wide. His hair is long and stringy, brown around his pale face. His Colors are light green and light yellow, excitement and joy. He looks her up and down, a furrow to his brow.  It is not an appraisal of her beauty, of her body that she sees in his eyes. So she expects that he is utterly confused by the fact that she reconginzes that he is tapping out Iron Maiden, ‘ Run to the Hills ’  on his desk. She adores that song. The band reminds her of the epic ballads that had dominated much of Westeroes’s taste. Yet, her mode of dress is quite odd for such recognition. 

He leans over.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Billy tense. Sansa is not afraid. Not with Billy sitting next to her. Not when the boy's, near man's, Colors are so soft and pleasant. 

“Aren’t you a little preppy for that song?” he asks, and his voice is amused. 

She feels her own smile stay.

“Aren’t you a little too stereotypical for that song?” she returns, amused. 

The boy is torn, distressed jeans, a leather jacket, and a bandshirt, Ozzy Osburn in this case. The cliche of the listeners of rock music. 

“Ooh, freshman sheepy has bite.”

She laughs. 

“I’m not a freshman.”  

He blinks.

“What are you then?”

“I’m a junior.”

He stares.

“You’re so fucking short,” he says, simply.

She laughs. It is a practiced one. Carefully tilts her head. She is actually quite tall for her age. 

“I would be. I’m only thirteen.”

The boy whistles.

His Colors stay placid. No dark, gross green of envy. No anger- He is simply surprised. She sees it. The flash of striking yellow is like a school bus.

She blinks.

“Whoa. Maybe you can help me with my homework, kid,” he says, and he-

Sansa likes him for his simple acceptance. Likes him for the kindness she sees in his dark brown eyes. 

“I wouldn’t be opposed if it's actual help, not doing your work for you. I’m Sansa. Sansa Mayfield,” she looks over, and grins at Billy, who is watching them like a hawk, “This is my older brother, Billy Hargrove.”

The boy keeps grinning.

“I’m Eddie Munson.”

She blinks. Smiles. With teeth. 

“Oh. How delightful. My brother requires your services.”

“Sansa,” Billy says simply, “You can’t do this here.”

“No adult is in the room, Billy.”

He snorts.

“Doesn’t change that you aren’t setting up a drug deal for me.”

Munson fumbles. Nearly drops out of his chair, he is laughing so hard. Sansa smiles.

“Hey kid,” he says, seriously, and she sees the kindness in his eyes, “Ever play Dn’D?”

Sansa hummed.

“No, I haven’t.”

His grin was bright, unyielding. 

“Like Fantasy?”

She smiled. She did. It was… Nostalgic. Fantasy had made her think of the stories she once thought the complete truth. Of good versus evil and of kindness in the smallest of places meaning the world to you. 

“Yes.”

He dug through his beat-up backpack. A binder, well-abused, and covered in stickers, is placed on her desk.

“Read it, kid, and come back to me. And you, Billy?” he grins with the sly sweetness, “Let’s talk cash during lunch.”

Sansa does the near impossible. She makes a friend on her first day of school. 

Chapter Text

High School in a small town reminded her, vidly, painfully, of the Court of King’s Landing. The smallness of it, the very insular nature of people who knew each other, in and out, clawing to know of each other disgraces and eager to trap her in their idiotic power struggles.  She is disgusted, quite certainly, because here she is, a girl of three and ten- thirteen a voice inside her reminds her, and here are these-

Children wishing to drag her into it. 

For that is what they are. Children who wish to call themselves adults. The society of modern America of her new world always managed to surprise her by its sheer gentleness. The peace of America makes her sorrowful of what could have been. Yes, there was conflict, there was ugliness she was privy to. Yet, violence was never so ready to come from this world. And she is so grateful for it, even part of her still braces for it. 

Westeros would have ripped everyone here apart. 

They are sweet summer children. 

If she wished, she could eat them alive. 

She did not wish to. She left that power struggle to her brother. She had lived through it once, and in a world that was so gentle in comparison to the world she had left, Sansa did not want to. Her job was simply to reap the benefit of his protection, true protection-

Sometimes in her darkest moments, she wondered if Billy would have left her trapped, would he have made the same choice as Robb and abandoned her? 

She tries not to compare her family from before to now. That is an exercise in misery she can barely contemplate. She tries desperately not to see the parallels between them. They're similar in some aspects, she knows. A boy burdened by the legacy of a Father. Robb’s was honor. Jon's was obsession.  Billy's is blood and fists. A girl bucking underneath the standard of femininity. Arya's solution was complete rejection. Max's was to focus on the empowerment of the feminine. A mother burdened by the care of her children in a world ready to tear her apart. Catelyn Stark chose righteousness. While Susan Mayfield chose obedience. But they are so very different. Superficial similarities do not truly make them comparable. Billy is not Robb, nor Jon. Max is not Arya. Her Mother is nothing like Catelyn Stark. 

Billy would have fought for me. Billy would have sent an army for his sister, or stormed the Red Keep himself-

Sansa pushes that thought away. 

Thinking of the past hurt. 

Even if she weaponized it to be comfortable in her new life. 

She adjusted her jacket and made sure her chest guard was set perfectly, her mask tucked underneath her right arm. In her left hand, she held her Saber. Needle, she called it in her mind. Needle for the sister who had cried for her at the end, who wielded her own Needle with beauty and fierceness. She is very aware of the looks of others as she strides into the gym. She spots Billy. Smiles as he talks to who could only be Tommy H. with the freckles. Progress is being made on that front.

Billy was always meant to rule , she thinks. 

A King in denim, determined, ruthless, charismatic, and beneath it all, fiercely loyal to those he loved- he was all that Westeroes would have wanted. It was what she had become in the end, only painted over with a sweet dove-winged cloak to gentle the masses to her. She had been a Queen- she had ruled through love and hidden her wolf teeth and claws to all but her enemies. A King was very different from what she had been. 

Billy would have been a good King in her first life, she knows, with the right counsel at his side, he would have been Great.   

He catches her eyes. Narrows his eyes, and slides his thumb across his neck. She smiles. Returns the gesture.

‘Plant your feet, and kill them dead, Ankle-Biter’, she thinks, amused, watching the sweetness of his golden prideful aura, tinged with a mulled red of anger. His words of encouragement before every competition, and the gruesome gesture had become a ritual between them. The boy next to him annoys him, she sees, watching carefully as the mulled red increases and dims his gold as he returns to his conversation with the freckled redhead. He stokes Billy’s anger. He would not last long against her brother. He would devour this boy, wolf that he was. She slips on her mask around a gentle, sweet smile. The coach had, as promised, laid down mats for her benefit, making up for a lack of proper battleground. It was makeshift, and she would have to be extra sure of her footing until she knew for sure she wouldn’t slip on the mats.  

The world narrows to her Needle. 

She repeats what she always does when she lifts her Needle. Before practice or before a match.

“What do we say to the God of Death?” Arya, she thinks of, whispers softly, smiling gently at the thought of her first sister’s name,   “Not today.”

She bows to an invisible opponent. And much like the dances she had perfected before she was seven namedays old as a Stark, Sansa is textbook perfect. She moves,  her legs light as air, her arm fierce and direct. 

In the words of Muhammad Ali, ‘Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee .’

It is her strategy, her mantra. 

She is a girl who flies through form after form, one after another, all while her saber makes fire-cut sounds through the air.  It is forty minutes later in that Sansa stops, heart-pounding, soul feeling light for working through her forms for the first time since they had arrived in Hawkins.  

“Whoa, I think they’re dead,” says a voice, joking.

Her saber is already moving, as is she. 

The boy, closer to a man, jumps back. Hands up. Her Needle stays up, even as her head tilts to the side.

“Whoa, whoa!” his voice is smooth, a singer, she thinks, either by nature or by training, and his hands in surrender, “Don’t kill me next, please?”

She carefully lowers her saber. And lifts her mask. She fights a grimace as flyaway hairs escape her pinned crown braids, or the fact that her face must be furiously pink, and sweated.  The former King is in this athletic class. She expected it. She did not, however, expect him to engage with her of all people. 

She also did not expect-

His Colors are not what I expected at all.

It is a soft, pale blue, Curiosity as he looked at her. A mid hue of blue, patience. The smallest touch of joyous pale yellow. An undercurrent of hopeful pale bone white and the blush pink of love. She stares . Sansa is very rarely wrong in her assessment of people. When she is, she can admit she is uneasy. Play a little game, whispers a Mockingbird in her ear. Her Colors are limited. In strangers, from a distance, her sight is like any other person’s. The more she knows someone, the more their colors start to leach from their hearts. Strangers, she has noticed, tend only to be visible from perhaps seven feet away. People she knows well? The last she had measured, Max and Billy had been visible from nearly an entire football field away. This King, she had not been close enough to see his colors. The rest of her own social thoughts come from observations, and her understanding of people. Something that had once been beaten into her, in another life. 

Being wrong was upsetting. Because she’s supposed to be better at this.

He’s a good person. Hopeful and full of love. I was mistaken.

Stupid, stupid girl. 

“Hey, I’m Steve, Steve Harrington. Coach mentioned that you would be using our gym for this period for um, national competition practice in um,” The boy makes a helpless, pathetic little sword motion with his arm, and she’s immediately, distressingly charmed by it and his small smile, “I need to show you where the mats go, and where you can store your equipment bag, cause the locker rooms on the girls’ side are-”

“Are too small. Yes, I saw,” she replies, softly, “My name is Sansa. Sansa Mayfield. I am happy to meet your acquaintance.”

She smiles. Dove perfect, Alyane sweet. Steve Harrington has soft eyes. Soft eyes and even softer colors. A brown someone could melt into. She fights a frown. Handsome, once King, and yet he was kind. 

How utterly strange and somewhat unsettling to be so wrong of someone. 

But Billy needs kindness, she thinks, and she fights another frown as she remembers the keen-faced girl his arm had been around. Nancy. Nancy Wheeler the Princess called a slut for being wth the other voyeur of a boy that took pictures of her- The circumstances of his missing brother did soften her, a little bit, but the photographs of Nancy and Steve disgust her so thoroughly she has no remorse she has set Billy upon him… She has no right to interfere with Nancy and Steve, she knows. The undercurrent of his love- he was a person of ardent affection. Her brother needed someone like this former King, but Sansa would not part lovers even for her family’s sake.

As much as she wanted Billy to be happy.   

“Coach has extra space in the more expensive storage closet- I have the key ‘cause I’m Captain of the Basketball and Swimming teams. Every class you can come grab me ever time the class starts, I can help you move stuff-”

“Everything good here, Ankle-Biter?” Billy is at her side in an instant, now that she has been approached. 

If he were a softer person, Sansa would reach for him, and hold him closely in gratitude at his protectiveness. He is not such a person. She turned to her brother and beamed sweetly. Billy looked at her sharply, bus yellow of surprise flickering across his mostly mulled red Colors.

“Steve was helping me with my equipment. He is so kind,” she chirps.

Billy faces her, but her poor brother does a side-eye and leisurely crawls up Steve’s body. His Colors shift, just a touch. Lust, the most passionate of reds spark. While the mulled red of anger is like old blood, Lust is as bright as fresh blood. She holds back the urge to hit him in public because being attracted to men is just as Taboo as it was in Westeros for him and he needs to protect himself .

Foolish boy , she thinks. 

However, she does not challenge him. He wished to be King in the ways of American High schools here, and she would not make his position weaker. She will always make his position stronger, for both their sakes.

“Is that so, Stevo?” teeth get bared as he turns to Steve. 

She fights a sigh. 

Billy always fell underneath the school of thought to pull metaphorical pigtails, as it were, in those he was truly utterly infatuated with. And, apparently, asethically, Steve was such a person.     

Bless Steve, he seems to be a dim sort, for he does not register the hostility,  a bemused sort of smile lingering on his face. 

“Hey. I’m Steve. You know Sansa?”

Billy visibly falters. Stares. 

“She’s my kid sister,” he grunts, off-footed by the pleasantness.

Oh, this is painful, She thinks, as Billy’s Colors add the hot pink of embarrassment. 

Which quickly turns more Mulled Red. 

“Cool. Coach said you wanted to join both the Swim and the basketball team? That’s great, man.”

“... Thanks.”

Sansa shifts forward. 

“Can you show me where I can put the mats? I wish to shower before class.”

“Sure, Mayfield.”

“I would prefer to be called by my first name.”

The boy grins. 

Pale yellow blooms. 

“Okay.”

Helplessly, Billy stares at the smile. 

Oh dear.

Chapter Text

Parting from Billy is difficult. Parting with Max that morning was difficult. Not seeing her mother- She felt like she was in pain, every second she did not see the soothing greens and blues of her sister. The fiery colors of her older brother. The muted greens of her mother. 

She knows it is a hindrance to function, to be so helplessly unsettled by their separation, but-

I lost so many people once when my family was cleaved into so many small, fractured, and broken pieces. And without their Colors, I feel like I wither, fray, and split at the seams when I do not see them.

I am clinging and dependent.  

The Stark Queen had been the same. Clinging to the pack that had returned to her. 

No matter how much they hurt me. 

She holds a sigh. Billy has no magic, as far as Sansa has been able to discern. But he is like her, honed and sharp beyond the limitations of Magic when it comes to people. And he knows her. Better than any other, bare Max, perhaps. But in Billy, she knows that they are kindred, down to the marrow of their harmed souls. In some ways, Billy will know her in ways even Max will never be able to. 

For I will never let my twin suffer as we have. 

“I'll walk you to class.”

She holds a flinch. He sees her anxiety. Her clinging. 

Be better than this, Sansa, she thinks to herself. She is the Hand of the King to Billy. She is his Master of the Whispers. She cannot allow her weakness to affect him. 

She gives a placid smile. 

“Your class is on the opposite side of campus,” she reprimes.

He frowns at her. His mulled red colors his otherwise good mood. 

Stupid girl. Look what you've done! 

Flirting, even as mean-spirited as it could be for Billy, always put him in a good mood. She was ruining it… And he had been flirting with Steve Harrington all morning. Poor boy, oblivious to it all. She had greatly misjudged him. There was a touch of lingering arrogance- of dimness to him. Nothing less than a King wasn't used to having. He reminded her vividly of Harry the Heir in a way that made her both nostalgic and unsettled. Her third betrothed- the gentlest of her suitors. 

The second to die, after Joffrey. 

A Mockingbird had slain him and had given her leave to slay him in turn. 

From the ashes of a Mockingbird, she and Sweet Robin had emerged alive, better for it.

Having the strength to kill Petyr Baelish had been his final, and unintentional, cruel lesson. 

But he had killed Jon Aryn, her father, her crazed aunt, Harry, and she knew with chilling certainty he would kill Robin next when their betrothal had been proposed. The last, as far as she knew, kin, to be killed by him had been the last thing to unleash her true wolf claws and teeth. She regretted Harry's death. She knew it would come, and her fletching feathers, clinging to the hope that there was some goodness in the protector she had thought to finally saved her, had made her hesitate. Harry had been boorish, cruel in some ways as men in his position could be. But he had not been a bad man. A monster as so many who coveted her had been. 

She holds a frown. 

Steve was like Harry. But softer . Kinder from the start. 

His arrogance- 

It had been tempered. 

Something happened, she realized. Something had turned the arrogance of a King to self-reflection.

Powerful indeed. 

“I can take her to class. You have,” Steve looms over her shoulder, Sansa holds in the urge to jolt, to grip him and twist him as Arya had once taught her, “Calculus IV? With Banner? My girlfriend, Nancy, is in that class, and my class is right next to that. Whoa, your sister is just as smart as my Nanc!”

He grins. Easy and kind and without intent. Some part of her is also reminded of herself, in another life, when Songs were true, and goodness was equal to beauty. She pities him in an instant. To be so innocent . To him so unknowing of the cruelty of the world. Then, she sees it. Her breath catches. Steve, she realizes as her brother's Colors flutter very briefly with sweet pink-

Dangerous. In a way I have not thought of and of no true fault of himself. 

He could very well break Billy's heart . Sansa forces another frown away. Forces her own biased urge to bare her teeth at the thought. Steve is not at fault . A heart offered is not a heart taken and destroyed. She knows that well enough. He is not responsible for Billy's feelings. 

She debates for a moment. 

“Would you be so kind?” She settles on, “I am a little nervous of walking across campus alone.”

Billy jolts. She inclines her head. Billy's jaw works. He lifts a brow. She smiles sunnily at him. His jaw relaxes. He knows her so well. He sees the truth of her, the truth she wishes she could better protect him from. Sweet Summer Children, she thinks, possessive and loving of all that is her's. She would test the waters. On two fronts. This Nancy, if she was less than true to Steve as the rumors were true… Well. Steve was a sweet, gentle soul built on love. She would do what she thought best for him as any true Queen would, bearing on Steve’s choice. As for his… leanings of love? Well. That was for her selfish wants of what Billy needed, and she could readily admit it to herself. She did not think a boy of such a small town in Indiana had even thought of males being an object of his affection. But that did not mean he was not inclined. Gentle coaxing would tell her soon enough. It was in one’s nature to love as one needed. 

“You gonna make sure my kid sister makes it alright, Harrington?” 

Billy was a good politician in the making. He knew how to read a room, and he knew her well enough to understand she felt safe, or that she wanted something of Steve. 

The former King keeps his easy smile.

“Yeah. I got it, man.”

He knocks a careful hand on Billy's shoulder. Gentle. Cupping.  Lovely pink, rosier, and brighter infatuation, filter across Billy's Colors. She watches as he stills at the casual, careful affection. She is surprised by the very brief, small smile on Billy's face that lifts before he seems to understand that he is smiling. King Steve's smile does not falter. She can guess now, why he has lost his Kinghood, why he would be the best of them to hold it. She sees it in every marrow of him. 

Love. 

She likes him more for it. 

If she is worried about what his goodness will do to Billy, who craves goodness and love like a starved man-

Well. 

Billy will never know if she is oh so curious if this Nancy feels as devoted as the King. For that what he is, Sansa realizes critically. A true King, even if he has lost the urge to rule, Steve Harrington bears the title to the very marrow of him, much like she does. One who would rule without arrogance, without the urge of might. She hums. One who easily gave it up. Even if only a friend for her brother…But he would be a greater consort for Billy. 

If he was so willing. 

“Bye-bye, Billy,” she chirps, sweetly. All sweet Dove and Alyane. She curls her fingertips gently. 

Billy squints at her. The wolf in him sees the wolf in her and doesn't buy the innocence at all. 

He grins. Touches knuckles gently to her cheek. 

“Be careful, Ankle-Biter.”

“I got her, man,” Steve cups Billy's shoulder again. 

Sansa bites back a sigh at the way Billy's Colors flutter. 

Oh dear. 

Quietly, Sansa wonders if her morals would bend for Billy's happiness after all. 

It would all depend on Nancy Wheeler. 

When Nancy Wheeler first meets Sansa Mayfield-

She doesn't like her. 

Maybe it was instinct. Something Nancy had ignored when Barb died when Barb had told her she was acting differently to just impress Steve. Something that makes her hate herself a little more. Because when blue eyes, vivid and bright in a startling pretty face- Nancy blinks and feels her stomach twist. Feels her heart stutter. For those blue eyes look at her and- ever so briefly, Nancy-

Nancy thinks of Barb. 

She doesn't look anything like her, prep look or not, she's not like Barb. Yes, they're tall for their age. Yes, redheads- But she's everything Barb thought she should be. Slim as a willow. Curly red hair in smooth waves and perfectly styled around her heart-shaped face, pulled back by a headband. She was so pretty it was honestly almost unsettling.

The girl smiles. 

Soft.

Sweet. 

With teeth . 

Nancy feels her hackles rise. Steve has a careful hand on the kid's shoulder. Who is laughing softly at something her boyfriend says. But something ices over her bright eyes the second she looks at Nancy. But then it brightens, turns keen in a way that Nancy can't quite pinpoint. Her guard is up, almost immediately. Instinct.  

“Hello,” the girl’s soft voice is a measured thing. Cultured, and pretty, California smooth, “You must be Steve's Nanc.”

Everything about Sansa Mayfield is pretty , Nancy thinks. Her eyes flicker across the clothes, clothes that fit her perfectly. 

Tailored . 

The only tailored clothes she's ever seen are on kids who live in Loch Nora. Like Steve. And Chrissy Cunningham.  

Rich Girl, Nancy clocks. She hates the way she calls her Steve's. As if all her worth is tied to being Steve Harrigton's girlfriend. It makes something in her buck immediately in protest. It's the twentieth century, and this kid is thinking so… backward. Nancy can admit it. She had felt so stupid when the rumor mill had made the rounds about a thirteen-year-old genius coming to finish school at Hawkin's High. 

Now she feels better. Genius? Testing well didn't mean she knew a lot about the real world. 

She's gonna get eaten alive, she thinks with pity.

“Nanc!” Steve's smile is bright. 

He's preening. Because a kid is laughing at his story. One that Nancy has heard a thousand times before. Because Steve is- predictable- some part of her thinks. Some part of him misses being King Steve after all. But she quickly readjusts her thinking and remembers that Steve is sheltered. He had only seen the tail end of last November. But he had stepped up. Apologized to Jonathan. To her. He had grown. 

And he saved me, she reminds herself. 

She's lost count of how many times she's had to remind herself.

Especially when she remembers Barb and Steve doesn't seem to. She swallows thickly.  Sansa's big, pretty blue eyes don't move from her face. She's smiling. Something about it makes Nancy's skin crawl, it's so fake . 

“Nanc, this little nugget is Sansa, Sansa Mayfield. Sansa, this gorgeous thing is my girlfriend, Nancy Wheeler.”

The girl hums. Even her hums sound pretty. 

“Nugget?” Her voice is giggling. 

Steve beams down at her. 

Nancy understands almost immediately what was bothering her about Sansa Mayfield. The girl has a crush. On Steve. 

Her lips purse. 

“You know, 'cause you're so Itty bitty? Like a chicken nugget.”

Sansa laughs. Pretty and like bells. Nancy frowns. 

“I have never been called Itty bitty or a chicken nugget before,” she giggles again, “Thank you again for bringing me to class, Steve.” 

Nancy would think Steve would see right through Sansa's painfully childish flirting, but her boyfriend just seems to eat it up . It reminds her so much of the more asshole moments of Before Steve, that Nancy is very reluctant to allow him to toss an arm around her. She almost shrugs him off. Peacocking because someone who was basically a middle schooler liked his hair was so… 

Immature, Nancy bites back a sigh at the sigh.

Sansa hums again. 

Pretty and soft. 

Nancy feels her face twitch. The last thing she needs is her boyfriend to have an ego trip, and a kid to be batting her long lashes. She swallows. They need to go to Barb’s today. And Steve can’t push it back again.

“Are you alright?” Sansa’s voice is careful. 

Nancy feels her spine straighten. She smiles.

“Of course, I am.”

Sansa tilts her head. Looking up from her lashes, black and she wonders how on earth a girl of thirteen could get her hands on mascara. Her smile turned sharper.

“If you say so, Nancy.”

Chapter Text

Max Mayfield realizes they’re staring.

The sensation of stares prickles at the back of her head, the side of her face-

She swallows, hands wanting to flex, fiddle with themselves to release some of the nerves she’s feeling. She wants to scowl and roll her eyes aggressively at everyone around her for treating her like an oddity, like a freak just because she moved in from California. But she remembers Sansa, remembers a childhood of late-night talks and warnings. Of pressing her head against Max’s shoulder, and quietly asking her, begging her, to be careful of people around them. Appearances are important, Sansa would whisper, hands trembling as they touched at the point in Max’s neck where she could feel the beat of her heart. With Billy being as wild as he was, with Sansa sticking up as the smartest person anyone in this tiny little town would ever know, the Mayfield and Hargrove household was an oddity in itself already, never mind moving from the large city of LA to this little place.  

Max likes little, even if she does miss her dad, just a little bit. 

Everyone has, throughout the day at Hawkins Middle School, stared at her. 

And Max has kept a neutral, easy face. Not quite smiling, not quite frowning, but something in-between that she hoped was friendly if not really approachable. 

She doesn’t think anyone has stopped staring, all day, and she can admit it- She’s both unnerved and a little… Pleased by the attention. She knows it’s stupid, very much so, when it comes to liking the attention by being the new girl from California But, it’s sometimes hard being the middle child, sometimes, when both Sansa and Billy are so… Sansa and Billy. She loves her brother and her sister. She thinks they’re the best people she’ll ever know, even if Sansa can sulk like nobody's business and Billy is such a fucking asshole. But she can admit to herself, that being the least interesting sibling can get to her times. What does she have? Her board, her bravery, and that’s about it. 

She’s just Max.

Billy is wild, loud, and vicious. Handsome, though it makes her want to hurl to admit it, a great athlete, and while he isn’t super into studying, he still gets straight B’s, is always popular with a million friends and boyfriends and girlfriends, and is super handy around the house. He can fix anything, Max knows. He’s streetsmart to his core. Sansa is so much prettier with her dresses and hair, book smart, can fence, play the harp, makes her own clothes, and- Well. 

There’s Sansa’s magic .

  The only secret that Sansa has only ever whispered to Max and not Billy, whispered it when they were very small, winding her fingertips through Max’s lighter hair. Whispered it carefully when the Men in suits had come, again and again, waiting for Sansa to slip up. Max remembers when they were five before their Mother met Niel, the man with the sickly sweet smile, some sort of tool on his belt, eyes gleaming-

Max remembers him and shivers every time. The Doctors. The men in clean, crisp suits that looked so weird standing in the duplex where they lived. The way he had looked at both her and Sansa for something she hadn't known. She just remembered how sacred Sansa had been. How hard she had shaken in their shared bed every day after he came to their house with pamphlets and stuff for her Mom to read, asking questions about Sansa’s intelligence, her ‘potential’. Billy never knew because this was before Neil had met their mom, but Sansa had tricked the horrible Doctor and his stooges with a pretty smile and a cold determination that still made Max tremble in awe every time she remembered it. 

Max hadn’t gotten what was wrong. 

Not until she had seen ET, and had thrown up her theater popcorn all over her sneakers, Billy’s boots, and Sansa’s mary-janes. Because it was in that dark room, watching ET being hunted by the government for being special, for being Other, that Max had suddenly understood that her sister had been investigated by the fucking government when she was a child. She hadn’t known how they’d known, how they measured it with their freaky little devices and shit, but they had suspected that Sansa had Magic, and from what Sansa had seen of them, they had wanted to hurt her.

“Or worse,” Sansa had whispered, darkly, as she had soothed Max’s hair away from her in the theater bathroom, “I think they wished to take. Keep me for themselves. Their Colors had been greed, envy, and vanity. They wished to have me, like a pretty little bird in a cage.”

Max is eleven, and she thinks she's understanding truly how evil the world could be, for the first time. 

“They couldn’t take you,” she had whispered, horrified, wide-eyed at her sister, “That’s kidnapping, that’s-”

Sansa had soothed at the cold sweat on Max’s brow, her eyes shimmering in the dull fluorescent lights of the movie theater bathroom. She had swallowed, looking up for a moment, and Max had been stuck by the way her lips had trembled, the way her twin, her little sister by three minutes, had swallowed and looked back down at her. Max was older, but in that moment Max would forever know that her sister's magic had made her more mature, older in all the ways that mattered when her sapphire eyes had looked at her. 

“They had the power to do so. I could see it, Maxine Mayfield. People with power, with rule over others, very easily become drunk on it. If they could sense my Magic, they could have found others. They must have done it before, I know it in the marrow of my bones. I just knew just enough to trick them, discourage them of my potential…”

“They will not take you. I will kill them first.”

Sansa had smiled and cupped Max’s cheeks carefully in her hands. And the look she had given Max was the fiercest her gentle sister had ever looked. 

“ When the snows fall and the white winds blow, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. Winter is Coming. We must adhere to Family, Duty, Honor, Max . Together, no one can hurt us. ” 

 Sansa had her Colors. Her ability to see the emotions of most people around her. Her sister was basically a fucking Jean Grey. A Wonder Woman. A superhero in sweet and neat mary-janes.  

Sansa had said the emotions of people’s hearts bleed out for her to see . 

She can admit it to herself. When Max was little, she kept waiting for her own Magic to start. Even the looming threat to Sansa hadn’t deterred her want for her own Magic. She waited. Sansa was her twin , Max had to have magic. At thirteen, Max knows that some part of her is still waiting for her magic to come alive within her. She wanted it so badly sometimes. The specialness of her twin- She knew it would be so easy to hate her sister for being… Well. Magic . On top of everything else that made Sansa special. If Sansa didn’t so obviously love her so strongly if Sansa didn’t make it a point to remind Max how she was important in her own way- How important she was to Sansa-

Max thinks she and Sansa wouldn’t… Wouldn’t be as close as she was. She knew how important it had been for Sansa to tell her the truth about her Magic. 

But then she would remember the Doctor, would remember how Sansa was so scared of people, how she would turn pale or a nasty shade of green when someone’s emotions were horrible. And Max would pray it was anything but Colors to be her powers.  She doesn’t think she can be like Sansa, knowing how horrible everyone is on sight. She peaks at the corner of her eyes. The boys were whispering. A group of four. All looking at her. But there was something in the way that they looked at her. It wasn’t just curiosity. It wasn’t envy.  

It was something like eagerness, and something good, Max thinks. 

She keeps her expression neutral. 

She fights to keep it neutral throughout the day. Because. The boys. The boys she thinks might become her friends, well.

They’re freaking weirdos that don’t even talk to her. 

They just stare and whisper and trail after her all day. During lunch, she decides to shred. Because no one has been, well, very willing to be friends. They haven’t been mean, but they haven’t really tried otherwise. She’s just glad no one gives her shit after her okay lunch. Stares follow her. Because apparently, Hawkins Indiana liked to stare. The four weirdos, the Stalkers she’s dubbing them officially, are still staring at her. Hanging around the base of the stairs leading up to the gym. She grumbles internally, even as she tips and gets air in beneath her feet in a simple ollie. She hears gasps. Someone actually claps the one boy with the warm brown-eyed and cute, white smile against his dark skin. She wonders, with a near roll of her eyes if she did a rail grind or something more dramatic would anyone piss their pants. 

The boy is unfairly cute, Max thinks. And he's one of the Stalkers. 

Part of her wants to confront the Stalkers. But Sansa had taught her to be quiet. To be careful and to look and listen. Part of the thing that made Sansa so good with people, she said, was beyond the Colors. Emotions are only part of the story. Sometimes people act very much aligned with their emotions. Sometimes they acted so differently, that it was scary. 

Those are the dangerous ones, Sansa would say. 

So Max watched, Max listened until she was sure. 

The Stalkers, well, judging by their very earnest reactions, were the ones who acted on their emotions. Following a stranger, a girl at who told her that much. Shooting her an eager smile every time she fully turned in their direction, the furious, but friendly pushing as they tried to hype themselves up-

Max dropped a note in the trash. Waited for a beat as they dug through it. 

Snuck up behind them, and dropped her board from waist height with a satisfying drop, and kick, balancing it carefully with her red sneakers. The Stalkers whirled around with screams. 

The cute boy screamed like a girl. 

Despite herself, despite Sansa's voice repriming her in her ear, Max smirked. Let out a snort at the visceral reaction. 

“You scream like a girl, Stalker,” she laughed.

The boy ducked. He was taller than her. Lean like a palm tree, and his dark eyes were framed by ridiculously long lashes. He would be Stalker in her head until he said his name. The other boys were not terrible looking either  if the smallest, palest boy needed any haircut but the bowl cut kind for his face. He was pale. Like he had just been sick, maybe. Almost as pale as Sansa, who didn't freckle in the sun like her but just burned, and whose skin was like snow white. 

He would be Damsel in her head. 

“Why are you following me around?” She demanded. 

“Ah-” the boy with the floppy, longer hair can't seem to get a word out. He had big, wide lips. 

He would be Big Mouth. Just because he was scowling as he was gaping at her. 

The Stalker stuttered. Ducking his stupidly tall head. The curly-haired boy pressed his lips together, mute. He'd be Curly. Damsel couldn't seem to look at her in eye. 

“Just say what you want!” she demands. 

“Dig-Dug,” Stalker blurts, “Are you MAD-MAX?”

My amazing arcade score that whipped the locals, she realizes. The Stalkers had chased after her for an arcade score. 

She tilts her head. 

“What’s it to you?” She frowns. 

The Stalker blinks rapidly. 

“That's so cool ,” he gushes, eyes bright. 

Despite herself- Max felt herself blush. Because the boy. He meant it. He was impressed. With her, Max. It was so weird of him. 

“What,” she blurts, all false bravado bullshit, “Like it was hard?”

The boy's lips parted, and he gave her the brightest, happiest smile. 

“Would you like to come trick or treating with us, Mad-Max?” he says, breathless. 

She blinks. 

The three other boys turn to him with different looks. Big Mouth shocked, then angry. Curly hair looks excited. Damsel looks unsure. 

Max blinks. 

Once.

Twice. 

“Why?”

“Cause you're new, and like, don't know the neighborhood and stuff,” that's Curly. 

Max purses her lips. 

“Oookay. Can my younger sister come?” 

Big Mouth scowls.

“We don't need some baby slowing us down-”

She scowls right back. 

“Sansa's my younger twin. ”

Damsel blinks.

“I-I didn't see anyone else at school? Um-”

She straightens her shoulders. Lifts her chin like Sansa taught her to.

You are a she-wolf, she reminds herself. Don't flinch, don't be anything but confident. You are steel.

“Sansa's crazy smart. She goes to high school,” she says, and she smiles with her teeth.

Curly gasps. 

“Whoah,” he mummers. 

Max smirks.

“So deal, or what?” She lifts her brows, “Or are you going to keep following me around?”

“Deal. We'll stop,” mummers Stalker. 

Max hums. She should probably learn their names if she's trick-or-treating with them. 

“I'm Maxine Mayfield. I go by Max."

“Lucas Sinclair,” says Stalker.

“Dustin Henderson,” and that's Curly. 

“Mike Wheeler,” Big Mouth. 

“...Will Byers,” mummers Damsel. 

She nods. 

She stamps down the urge to ask if they were friends now. She knows she won't feel comfortable until Sansa checks them out herself. 

“So any of you Stalkers ride?” She stamps on the tip of her board, and it easily snaps back to her waiting palm. 

They stare, eyes wide, shaking heads. 

“We bike?” That's Will, saying it like a question. 

She hums.

“Tricks?”

“From point a to b,” snaps Mike. 

She feels her eyes narrow slightly. Out of all of them, he doesn't want to be near her.

She purses her lips. 

Wait. Listen. 

She would see his deal, and if not, Sansa would. She lets the pissy words slide off her back like water on a duck. 

“What's your schedule?” And that's Lucas, eyes wide and eager. 

She huffs.

“Still Stalking?” She asks. 

He ducks his head.

Cute smile again. A little crooked. Max likes it. 

“So we can sit next to each other.”

“That's presumptuous of you.”

He blinks. Dumbly at her.

She really shouldn't find that as cute as she does. 

Dimly, despite them not being Sansa and approved- Max hopes she just made some new friends. 

Chapter Text

Billy feels his teeth clench when he realizes Sansa has actually managed to make friends again. 

It isn't because it's bad.

Billy tries not to acknowledge the greedy part of himself that bares its teeth at anyone else having his sisters's attention. Sansa and Max- in the course of their time, had become his . His sisters. His to protect. His to guide. His to keep away from his dad's heavy fists. From their own sperm donner's fucking reach until Billy handled it. 

Billy knew he was fucked up. 

He knew it like the sky was blue. 

He knew he shouldn't crave all of their attention. All of their affection. He knew it with a vivid realization when he was thirteen, how much he needed them to look at him as their rock, their- protector, Sansa had called him. He knew when he fucking wanted to slap Susan's hands away from Max's pigtails and make them himself. Or when his dad tried to hold Sansa’s hand the first day she went to high school and they walked her to campus. 

He knew it wasn't healthy. He wasn't their parent.

But they made it so easy to be it. Sansa was as antisocial as she was, and Max was nearly as bad.

But he knew socially, Sansa and Max would be better with friends. Getting them to interact with the world beyond their small family. Especially with college looming over all three of their heads. He, despite what Sansa planned, was going to a trade school. He was good with his hands, and he could get a high-paying job as an electrician or a mechanic. That would set him comfortably. Sansa? He planned on getting her to one of the better schools. Harvard. Or Yale or some shit. 

He knew she had the best potential. 

So that meant being separate. For a little while. Until Max finished school at the very least. 

So socially? 

The girls needed to get to it. It was, however,  not great that Sansa had seemed to decide that teenage boys way older than her were her choice. He had hoped a senior or junior girl would take a liking to her.   More than halfway through her day, he saw no dice in that case.  Eddie Munson he gets. He's on the fringe. Not popular, but a necessary element to the high school scene. No one fucks with the local dealer unless they're a fucking moron. There's power to him, social graces given to the drug fixes. Because the Popular crowd needs their fixes, even if they're claiming the opposite through lying fucking teeth. That he gets. Does he like the fact that his nerdy interests align with Sansa's?

No.

No, he fucking does not. 

Does he like the fact that when they round the corner, he's gesturing wildly to his baby sister, whose face is tilted up, looking on with quiet amusement?

Again, no. 

Because Sansa he's a drug dealer for fuck sake's.

King Steve is the oddity. Because. He's the opposite of the type that Sansa gravitated toward. She generally avoids most boys, to begin with. Never mind, pretty, popular types. She generally hated them. But there they were. Steve the King and Eddie the Freak, hanging on either side of his kid sister.  A new girl was added to the party. 

Nancy Wheeler. 

Not his type. Prissy. Prep. Thin. Brown hair, narrowed eyes at Sansa-

Jealously , Billy thought with a curl.  

It was common enough. Sansa was that fucking girl to cause it in other girls. Smart and beautiful? Worse, fucking nice? It was easy to hate her from an outside perspective.  Didn't mean that Billy didn't hate the skinny bitch on sight for it. Because that type of jealously stems from seeing Sansa as a threat, for attention, for accolades, for whatever petty thing a girl thought was her due. Never mind the fucking arm Harrigton had around her shoulder, Nancy Wheeler was already on his shit list. 

How dare she throw anything my baby sister's way? Fucking petty, small-town bitch. 

He repressed a snarl, even as he patted absently at the freckled boy's face. 

“I'm going to check on my sister,” he says, simply. 

“What?” he blinks stupidly at him.

But his eyes flicker nervously to Sansa. Might have to be because some Bible-thumping dickwad had made some bitch comment about a girl obeying the norms for the sake of men at the gym, his steely blue eyes following Sansa's form, and Billy had made a point of slamming him into his locker. And reminded him with a knee to the dick that Sansa was thirteen, and to lay off of her. 

No one made a smart comment about her for the rest of the day. Not within earshot, at least.  Which is what Billy had been aiming for. 

“She's going to sit with a drug dealer,” he grins, “I have a purchase to make.”

The boy blinked and grinned.

His teeth were filled with peanut butter.

“The Freak's shit is good.”

Billy snorts.

“I doubt it, but he's all Hawkins got.”

Fury was deep. Aching pit in his stomach. Even getting a pleasant smile for Sansa was tough. 

But. 

Of course, she fucking knew. 

She was fucking impossible like that.

She smiled. Sweet and innocent but he knew she knew he was upset. 

“Ankle-Biter.”

“Told you, man,” that's pretty Harrington.  He seriously needed to stop being so cute or Billy would bite him, “I got your sister to class and everything. This is Nancy, my girlfriend.”

He looked down. 

She looked suddenly uncomfortable.  Blinking quickly as she shot Sansa, and then him a surprised look. 

“Hi,” God, even her voice was prissy.

He grinned. Charming as he could. 

He fucking hated her. He was going to spill so much fucking shitty beer on her at the Halloween party. 

If she was even invited. 

“Hiiii,” he drew out the sound, mockingly, became he was a dick like that, “How you doing?”

Her lips pursed. 

How Steve kissed those thin lips, Billy couldn't fathom. 

“Eddie was just telling me that the D and D club meets on Fridays for a play session,” Sansa’s voice was smooth, and she gently moved around the boys to stand just next to him.

He hummed.

“Not on Game Days, or during Meets,” he told her, seriously.

She smiled. 

Her real one. The softest, most delicate smile she had. The rarest one. The one Billy wished he could get her to smile more often. 

“Of course not,” she said. She carefully stepped closer. 

Just a touch. 

He sighed. 

Touched his knuckles gently to the underside of her chin. 

“No band?”

She shook her head. 

“Harp doesn't translate well to other instruments in their set.”

“That bites. Do you think-”

“I won't get the approval for nationals in fencing until the end of the month,” she reminds him. 

He huffs. 

“Oh,” that's Munson, and his brown eyes, bright, shine, “You're both adorable. ”

Billy freezes. 

Sansa giggles.

It's the only reason that Billy holds back from punching Munson in the nose. 

And the weed too. But mostly Sansa's amusement. Because that means that Munson is not being a dick. But still.

“Fuck off,” he says, simply. 

“She's your baby ,” Munson crows. 

Okay. He was being a dick. He wonders, faintly, hands itching, if he should headlock the asshole. 

“Do members of Hellfire get a discount on weed?” Sansa asks, sweetly. 

Harrington squawks.

“Munson you sell this little nugget weed and I will dick punch you,” he snarls. 

Billy falls a little bit in love.  He swallows.  Sansa shoots an amused glance to Harrington. 

“It isn't for me. But out of curiosity, how do you dick punch someone?”

“It's in the name, Ankle-Biter.”

She hummed. 

“You punch the dick or punch with the dick?”

Munson nearly drops, he's laughing so hard. Billy snorts. It had taken years for him to get Sansa to say anything remotely impolite. He was so proud of her for using it to trip people up.  Wheeler looks like she swallowed a lemon. 

Killjoy priss, he thinks, teeth gleaming. 

“Sansa,” he says with a huff, “Stop trying to score my weed for me.”

“I’m being helpful,” she sniffs, false snootily. 

He huffs. 

His anger- like it always does with Sansa or Max, slips away. 

And Billy breathes a bit easier. 

Chapter Text

Sansa knew the second she passed into the borders of Hawkins that there was something wrong with it. There was something dangerous within its limits. She had hoped for more peace before she encountered it. Before her Pack was in danger, Sansa hoped to have more intelligence to the situation. More bearings with the town itself.

Stupid,  stupid  girl  who never learns.

Automatically, her hands go for her sword’s case, even as she feels her legs lock in place, fighting stance apart. Cold sweat drips down her brow, snaking it's way down her neck. She feels her gaze go up and up.  

Predator, something in her howls.  

She realizes that danger is so much closer, so much more- Present than she would have ever guessed. She feels her breath stopped in her throat. It had been a good day. She had made a tentative friend in Eddie Munson, whose book was a weight on her back. She slips out of her backpack. It hits the ground and Sansa cannot even hear it over the roaring of her own heart. 

Because the gods are Cunts, whispers a loyal Hound in her ear.

Four boys trail after Max. Sister. She-wolf. Young. Fragile. Hers. That in itself isn’t alarming. What is alarming, however, is the thing that looms large over the boys. Shadow. Levithan. Eldritch. She has only ever felt once, such initial terror, such horrific knowledge that something is wrong. Evil. Unnatural and powerful. 

The Night King with his piercing, glowing blue eyes. 

The Shadow-

It makes her feel the same. The same instinctual, horrified, and stupified terror of something Other existing. It is an enormous thing. There are no screams, no shrieks of terror, and Sansa knows she is the only one to see it. It is monstrously large and looming, probably two or three stories tall. A Shadow that is somehow physical, a weight beyond condescended air. It writhes. It spins and twists in place, a malevolent cloud. A queer head, long and elongated. A jaw that is almost a maw, gaping.  Limbs shifting and twisting. Each moment its body twists and turns. It is like ants, a swarm of them, yet it is still one entity somehow. Sansa's breath hitches. She has trained herself to never show fear and to never flinch. 

She had only flinched as the Stark Queen once, and that was before the Night King, whose blue eyes had borne into her own as he had caressed her face. Whose fridge hands had left frost in his wake in her skin, and who had gently wrapped them around her throat and quietly murmured in the old tongue, ‘ My Queen of Love and Beauty’ and gripped tight at her throat, crushing it, as his face had lowered and tried to place his lips upon her own. Only then.   

The Shadow screams. 

And Sansa Mayfield flinches.

One of the boys behind Max drops. She watches as he looks at her, eyes wide, whites showing in his terror, and in an instant, Sansa knows without a doubt that he too, hears and sees it. His hands are over his ears, and he squeezes his eyes in terror. The other three boys whirl around, crowding around him. Sansa sways on the spot. She tries to lock her knees, even as her gaze snaps back to the looming monster above her. 

The fear is so overwhelming. 

But not so crushing as the writhing limbs crash atop her with a roaring, glutinous greed and hunger. Sansa tries to stay standing, tries to keep her head high- Stays on her feet stubbornly as the Shadow hits her. She was a Stark Queen, she is an American, and she kneels to no one. She feels her knees shake, and strain. She lasts a single, precious moment. But ultimately she crumbles underneath the pressure of the monster. Without a sound. Vaguely, she realizes that Max is running for her and that her sister is screaming her name the second she hits the ground. Vaguely, she hears the boy screaming. 

She remembers a sister screaming it to her once, hand on her molted throat, tears falling from a follower of death- Pack . Sister.  The Shadow is all around her, yet he presses closer and closer. She feels it then.  Feels the mind. The sensation past Power, Hunger, and Greed. Not a monster. 

Not a real one.

Sansa sees a face.  A man's face. Mutilated. It reminds her of a Hound. Of Tyrion's face after the Battle of Blackwater. But there is curious detachment in him. In an instant. she knows he is not like the men who wore the masks of cruelty only to be gentle. His face matches what he is inside. Because he seems to realize that she sees him. Blue eyes. Lighter than her own, more intense than Max's, cold and distant, look at her. His molted mouth parts in mild surprise.   Something within her, something older than the marrow of her bones, than the blood of Mayfields stirs. Fury, cold and unrestrained from other men, controlling, attacking innocents, stirs within her. 

No, she thinks, snarling at the sheer fury of it all.  

The Shadow shrieks. The Man flinches. Blue eyes going wide. Wolf teeth bare themselves. 

I am steel. I am a Queen of Winter. My life, my breath, was given for the Dawn, for the dream of Spring.  I was once a bloodline of eight thousand years strong. You will not have me, if even the Night King could not keep me.  

She feels Billy, frantic touch at her throat. She feels Max. Her twin. The gentle soul that had eased her grief in ways that no other being had ever been capable of. And distantly, she feels the boy. 

Will.

Will the Wise, something whispers. 

She feels his terror. A little boy at the mercy of something larger- She remembers Bran, sweet Bran who wished to be a knight, lost and consumed by the Three-Eyed Raven. She feels his awesome fear for his friends.  

A Stark Queen pushes. 

The Man rears back, screaming. 

The first thing that tips off that something is wrong with Billy, is that Sansa takes too long to come back with Max. His fingertips drum impatiently on his car. Steve pretty boy Harrington is chattering away, a distraction, with sour face Priss Wheeler next to him, and a surprisingly grinning Munson. Billy twitches. Jiggles hid keys in hand impatiently. Then. It happens. Billy feels it before he understands. Feels himself jolt upwards with something that is wrong.

Max starts screaming. 

He knows it's her without even really processing the sound of her voice. Vaguely, he knows someone else is screaming. But all he cares about is Max.  

“ Billy !” she calls.

It bursts through his skull like he thought it instead of hearing it. His feet are moving. Behind him, vaguely, Billy knows that Harrington, Wheeler, and Munson follow. He doesn’t care. He just moves. He is heart is screaming as he crests over the hill towards the junior high. 

Max is crying. 

That's what he sees at first. Her face was red, her mouth agog in a wail. He can count the number of times Max has cried on his hand. She's curled over-

Sansa. 

His little sister twitches. Gurgles. Face down. Hands clawing at the asphalt. Something is howling in Billy. 

First aid, then hospital. 

He all but shoves Max off, and flips Sansa. Pulse. High. Her skin feels like it's on fire. Her lips are parted in a silent scream. Her breath is a heaving, rapid thing. She’s shaking, convulsing slightly. Eyes rolled back. Seizure something in him says. He's freaking out. He didn’t know. He pries open her mouth. He strips off his belt and stuffs it in her mouth, as far as he can. 

“Has she ever had a seizure?” He Bellows at Max. 

She tentatively nods. 

“When we were very small,” her voice sounds all but five. 

Billy's hands are shaking. He hadn't known. 

He hadn't known. 

“Something is wrong with Will,” she sniffs. 

He blinks. 

“Who the fuck is Will?”

She points. Four kids. One on the ground. He’s like Sansa. But his shakes are more violent. More like an unnatural tremble than Sansa’s shakes. He watches as blood starts to slip down the boy’s face. He looks down. Swears. 

Blood slips down Sansa's face.

“Get a belt in his mouth,” he snarls to Steve, “Dip his head fucking forward so he doesn’t choke on his own blood.”

Steve scrambles to comply, sitting and sliding down to kneel next to the boy. Billy feels sweat drip from his brow line. He looks at Munson.

“The fugly van in the lot is yours, right?”

The older boy is pale. He jerks his head. His eyes are bugged out.

“Bring it. They need space on the way to the hospital.”

Munson starts sprinting. 

Billy places a hand against Sansa's face. Tries to be gentle as he tries to keep her from biting her tongue off and choking on her own blood. 

“We're okay, Sansa. We're okay,” he swears. 

He isn't sure if he can really promise her that. 

Max keeps crying.

Billy holds his little sister's face and wants to cry as well. 

Chapter Text

Will Byer wakes with a Queen of Winter above him. Holding his head in her lap, her fingertips in his hair. She soothes a gentle hand down his face. She is singing.A soft song in a language he does not know. But somehow he knows what it means. Not the words. But the feeling of song itself. It is a prayer. A song of prayer. 

A plead for-

“Not today,” she tells him, voice gentle, “I ask the God of Death not to take us today. It was a hymn my sister wrote for me.”

Her crown is a battered ring of copper-like metal, swords of obsidian glittering against her dark red hair. Her face was serious, pale and her eyes were a brilliant deep blue, looking around them in silent protection . She wears a dress with armor real armor. Nothing plastic, a real metal chest plate, of a glittering black like her crowd's swords, pauldrons, and gauntlets. He didn’t know armor could be made from stone. Embossed running wolves, snarling mouths and falcons, and river fish. Her skirts beneath his head are so soft, and he turns his head slightly to awe at the white velvet embroidered with scattered red five-pointed leaves, running wolves, mouth open in a snarl. A cloak of white feathers runs across one shoulder. 

He knows she's a Queen of Winter. 

Because he had felt it when He had reached for her. 

Greedy. 

Always hungry . 

And he had felt Her. Fear. Knowing of monsters in the dark. He had felt how angry she had become when she had seen Him, how her fear had swallowed down to near nothing when she had seen that horrible face.

“Queen of Winter,” he mutters. 

She smiles. She's very pretty, he notices absently. The way a sunset can be pretty to him. Her smile is a soft gentle thing. Human and small. She's pale, her blue eyes tired.

“Hello, Will the Wise,” her voice is soft. 

She knows him.

Feels Him too. 

“It was real,” he mummers, “It's not just in my head. They were wrong.”

The Queen tilts her head. 

“What has occurred to you? What has that Man done?”

Will swallows. 

“He took me,” he whispers, “He slipped into me. He- clawed his way in to stay. I thought it was done. I thought it would end when I left.” 

The world below him ripples, it was water. Black space. Light coming from their bodies. Then it changes. It is Hawkins. But not. The Upside-down Will had called it.

“Rot and ruin,” The Queen says, “Ashes and a red-filled sky. I heard tales of a place like this once. Kin of Kin escaped this Doom with Dreams.”

She gently moves him to sit up. She stands. Skirts flare. Her cloak of white feathers is pushed back. A sword is pulled from her side. Glittering black like her crown and her armor. She is like all the characters that he and his friends so eagerly pretended to be, but real . He swallows. 

“This is a memory, of where I was taken to. It is like Hawkins but Not,” he said.

“Walk a turn with me, Will the Wise.”

She holds out a hand. He is surprised. It is so small. She is tall, but slight. Young. Yet the Queen feels so large.

Powerful.

He takes her hand. It is a cool and gentle hold, her fingertips squeeze him softly. Will squeezes back.  They walk. Hand in hand. Her other hand was poised and ready with her sword. Will feels protected. She had stood up to Him and held her head tall.  It hurts to see. This ugly and rotted world He had pulled him to. Where He had hurt Will, she feels this.

“If it be memories,” she muttered. 

The world rippled again. 

It was snowing. 

He breathes. The snow gently melts down panels of glass. They glitter in the sun. They are in a greenhouse. Green. Lush with life.

Will feels warm. 

He liked it cold. But Will never has. 

“This was once the glass gardens of my Mother. She grew Southern Flowers in Summer Snows,” she said. Her voice was sad. 

“In… California?”

Because she has to be Mad Max's sister. He vaguely remembers seeing her before He had slammed into them both. The Queen turned. Her eyes were so old. 

“ Before . I have never spoken of this to anyone. But I think we are allies now, Will, against this Man who thinks to take from us. Using who I was Before this life has given me strength. It always has. You heard me, did you not? When I grew furious? When I bared my teeth and claws?”

“ I am steel. I am a Queen of Winter. My life, my breath, was given for the Dawn, for the dream of Spring.  I was once a bloodline of eight thousand years strong. You will not have me, if even the Night King could not keep me,” he returns. 

The words are burned into him. 

She smiles. She is-

She is great and terrible. 

“My name was Sansa of House Stark. I was young. A Queen of three Kingdoms. A Long Night came. It was dark and terrible.”

She sheaths her sword. Touches at blue roses. Will has never seen a color so brilliant. 

“I died. A distraction, for my sister to have enough time to end the horror of the Others.”

“Others?”

Her lips twitched.

“White Walkers. Ah. Ice Zombies? The Night King was once a man. He-”

“A lich.” 

She nods. 

“Like Dungeons and Dragons, yes.”

He feels his lips twitch. It took him a moment to understand that he almost smiled. 

“You were reborn?”

She nods again, serious and firm.

“I was woven anew. I am Sansa Mayfield now.”

“I'm Will. Will Byers. I always been Will.”

She smiles. 

“Well met, Will the Wise.”

He squeezes her hand. 

“W-well met, Queen Sansa.”

The world ripples. They are back in the dark. Sansa takes out her sword again. She grips Will's hand and pushes him behind her. They are not alone. He knows it. So does Sansa. 

“Hold fast, I am here, Will, you are not alone,” she says, and her voice is tight and strong.

Will shakes. 

“Not today,” she whispers, “Stranger do not take us today. Please. Please do not take this peace from me so soon.”

“ Pretty .” 

Will jerks. 

Standing in socks, with wide eyes is- a girl.  Just a girl. Overalls. Short, tight curls. She's staring at them with brown eyes like chocolate. Her fingertips are twiddling with the flannel she wears. 

“State your name. Your purpose,” Queen Sansa demands. 

The girl tilts her head. Her eyes are brown, her face soft and curious. 

“Will,” She says.

Sansa shifts a little more in front of him. 

“ State your name and purpose. I will not ask again.”

The girl looks at Queen Sansa. Her face crumples. Brows squished together.  Jaw working. 

“Eleven. What is purpose?”

“... how can your name be a number?”

“El,” Will says,  eyes going wide, “Mike said she was the one who found me from the Upside-down. She saved my friends from the Demogrogan.”

Queen Sansa tilts her head.

“Be you an enemy or an ally?”

El blinks quickly. 

“Enemy?”

Will grips at Sansa's hand. 

“She's good. A friend.”

“Friends don't lie. Don't… Hurt. Who are you? Will?” The girl, Eleven, takes a step forward. Hand out. 

“She's Sansa.”

Eleven tilts her head. She reminded Will of Mews, Dustin's cat. The look before it pounced. Eyes forward. Shoulders tense. 

She's a superhero, Mike had said. Like the X-Men. 

“We're all friends,” he blurts, hand curled around Sansa's wrist. 

Sansa looks at him from the corner of her eyes. He swallows. Slowly, she nods. Her shoulders relax. She hesitates, but she puts her sword away. She lifts her chin. El takes a shuffling step closer. 

“Why here?” The question is serious.

“... we were attacked, hurt by… A man,” Queen Sansa's voice is hesitant, “Is English, not your native tongue?”

El frowned. 

“N-native?”

Sansa takes a hesitant step forward. El takes another step closer. 

“I am asking if English isn't your first language.”

“Only language. Only one tongue.” 

Sansa tilts her head. 

“I see.”

“Why are you here, Eleven?”

El blinks. 

“Called. Singing. Pretty.” 

The world around them ripples again. 

Sansa's hand goes for the sword at her hip. 

And He is here.

Chapter Text

Doctor Sam Owen felt his stomach twist. Hands carefully, turning open the thick file. He licked his lips as he stared down at the text in front of him. He had wanted to be wrong. But there it was. The kid that went down with Will's most explosive episode to date, was indeed connected to the previous division head's sweep of the nation. 

Clear as day. 

Sansa Mayfield was a potential subject of MKUltra Phase II. 

Potential Number Subject: CA1013

Name: Sansa Mayfield

DOB: 03/20/1971

BloodType: O-

Summary: Subject CA1013 triggered residential sensors of psionic activity in California Sector South 3, 03/27/1976. As high as PSI 7.4 reading, possibly higher due to distance to actual sector sensors. Potential PSI markers of Subject CA1013 include high intelligence, behavioral differences, and unusual brain activity. Observation suggests that CA1013 is a unique subject of PSi type, much like MKUltra Phase II Subject Number 008, as no other markers like Number Subject 001 have been observed. No concrete connection to MK Ultra Phase I subjects, similar to Number Subject 001, Number Subject 008, and Number Subject 031.

Note : CA1013-A twin sibling shows PSI 0 readings. Twins are fraternal, not identical like Subject 019 & 020. 

Addendum: 05/18/1976 Subject CA1013 has only triggered psionic sensors under seizure afflictions. No measurable phenomenon was observed. Similar disutility was observed in adult MKUltra Phase I Subjects after the disuse of compound injections. Food and water sources were tested to be untampered. No other potential subject within a hundred-mile radius was detected, nor have other potential subjects born within the same hospital and day shown potential after testing. Subject CA1013-A PSI 0 reading no matter stimuli. 

Addendum: 09/10/1979 Subject CA1013 will be observed as all other potential subjects due to loss of MK Ultra Phase II Subjects 01-10, 12-33. Pending negotiation with the Ethics Board on whether promising potential subjects such as subject CA1013 should be removed from the general population for closer observation.

Addendum: 10/18/1979 Pending decision denied unless subject concretely shows PSI readings above 06, and under stable conditions, showing them a threat to the American Public. As of such limitations, Subject CA1013 is under ‘Inconclusive’ Psionic status. Subject CA1013-A is Null. 

Psionic Status : 

1976: Subject CA1013: Inconclusive, Subject CA1013-A: Null

1979: Subject CA1013: Inconclusive, Subject CA1013-A: Null

1980: Subject CA1013: Inconclusive, Subject CA1013-A: Null

1981:Subject CA1013: Inconclusive, Subject CA1013-A: Null

1982:Subject CA1013: Inconclusive, Subject CA1013-A: Null

1983:Subject CA1013: Inconclusive, Subject CA1013-A: Null

Sam sighs. Flips through the file. The folder is heavy. Reports on behaviors. Candid shots. Report cards. A few newspaper clippings of fencing competitions and academic meets. 

Kiddo has a bright future. 

It was different, he realizes. Objectively knowing that the American population had been monitored to such a close extent since Phase I, and that children were still on the radar of the CIA’s cross-guards to be acquired into the experimental division for the safety of the American public. It was different in the sense that all subjects of Phase II were confirmed dead, save two, and Dr.Brenner’s reach and influence had pittered away by the time the events of 1983 had gone down. Subject Number 008, and Subject Number 011 were the only points of keeping the project alive, that and Brenner’s obsession. At this point, the MKUltra was considered dead as its subjects and the American Government had made it known that they wanted to tie up loose ends, including the fuckery of the leaking inter-dimensional waste.

That was Sam’s job. Clean Up. Contain. Keep the locals from going public. 

That was why he was here.  

If that meant he played Doctor, well, he once had been a physician. A military one, but a physician nonetheless. Will, and Sansa, now, are the youngest patients he had ever held. 

It was supposed to be over, he thinks.

It feels like in the year he's been stationed here, Sam has aged twenty years. He tries not to think how much MKUltra reminded him of the after-major math of some of the fucking Camps.  He knew it happened on American soil. American citizens were forced into them. Not... Technically as cruel as the ones found in Europe, but a twisted parallel that most in the government don't want to remind the American public. Being forced to relive the horror and witnessing the aftermath of it was another thing entirely. Especially since it was more akin to the latter than the former.   It was why he was called in, after all. From his… experience in World War II. His studies into the Camps and Unit 731 in particular were eerily like what he had seen in the Phase I and Phase II Subjects. Not that great old Uncle Sam was willing to admit it. 

“You say her stepfather was given a promotion option at work?” He tries not to think of Brenner. 

That bastard had his hands in all sorts of pies. Even being put on temporary suspension under the guise of ‘medical leave’ and pending and brutally forced retirement didn't give Sam much hope that study MK Ultra phase II was as dead as he had first thought. Not now. A potential subject, suddenly moving into Hawkins? He fucking felt the fine hairs at the back of his neck when he had stared at their PSI readings. He knew that there was… Talk. Of termination of all previous subjects if they were ever confirmed alive.  

He tries not to think about Subject 011, the youngest surviving subject.  

Her name was Jane Ives .

He had seen her birth certificate. Seen her mother’s… Government-sanctioned torture in the guise of a medical transcript. He thinks of her and he thinks of Will, and now Sansa Mayfield, and he wonders when Brenner’s obsession would stop. 

“A month ago.”

“... Was it September?”

“Yeah, Doc.”

Sam sighs. Hands tight on the file. Brenner had woken from his coma nearly two months to the date. He had been discharged one month ago.

Fuck.

“Check for Hargrove names in the CA potential subjects.”

“Sam-”

“Check.”

“Yes, sir.”

He looked down at the file. The reading was abnormally high. But he wondered if the boy who was prowling outside was also a potential subject. 

“Sir-”

Dr. Butler held up a fucking file. Thinner than Sansa’s, but still a fucking file. 

“I fucking hate being right,” Sam told Butler, grim as he grabbed the file. 

A quick glance-

PSI reading, maxed at 3. Below the allowable threshold. Technical status, inconclusive. 

“Right. Let’s go see our patients.”

Brain activity, he sees is high. Accelerated Heart Rate. Respiratory rate. Temperature was high. The opposite. Dangerously hovering just above hyperthermia for both kids. PSI readers are hovering at a hot 9.9. On both of them.  

He swallows. 

Brenner isn't here. However, not all personnel have been purged from the location. The lights above him flicker. Sam looks up. Dread creeps down his spine. He can see Brenner making his case in the wake of this. But this wasn't an unclear custody situation. There were witnesses. The children had a history. 

He sees little Will, grinning at the thought of Halloween. He sees little Sansa, smiling pretty with a national merit medal around her next. 

Sam swallowed. 

“Fuck,” he mutters.

The lights above him flicker again. 

I’m saying that a lot today.

Gingerly, he approached the beds of the two children. 

That's when the kids start to lift off the bed. 

Fuck.

The strength of Her sends Henry Creel, Number One, reeling . 

He hadn't-

He hadn't expected anyone close to him to be Hawkins. He thought Papa was… More careful of them all. Will, sweet little Will had been a surprise. Weak . A dim little light in the dark and amongst the disgusting populace of Hawkins, but nothing more. A little flame he could make only slightly larger, but not strong enough beyond a simple foothold into the world he was born from. Enough Henry had hoped, to break through. To give him room to make more of his world. 

When he had felt Her , he had reacted on instinct, a predator latching onto the brightest light in the gloom next to his dim little flame. A star to a flickering spark. He had not expected a fight despite it. 

When does an apex predator expect one?

How could Henry think anyone like Eleven, strong enough to fight and win, existed? Because he had made sure, as Eleven had thrown him into the void that would become his Eden, to tear and rip at her as he went. Because he had thought he would die, he at least took bits and pieces of Eleven with him. He had reached Paradise. His Eden. His world.  And he had become what he had always meant to become. 

But there She was. 

The brightest he had ever felt, except little Eleven herself, who had felt when Papa had muddled his senses. 

Henry had felt his heart jump when She had howled at him, teeth bared. Felt it jump and quiver and he wondered . 

How had Papa never found Her? 

He appears before Her. 

Will is there. His little flame. 

And-

Henry feels something in him lurch. 

Eleven. The one who- sent him home.  He grins. Eleven flinches. Her little hands grip tightly at Her white feathered cloak, and she hides a little behind Her. Maybe Eleven doesn't recognize him, as changed and beautiful as he has become. No matter. That would change soon enough.  

His eyes go back to her Her. The light in the dark. The Shining Star. She has a sword. Armor of glittering stone. A crown on Her small little head. 

And-

He saw it. 

A phantom… of Her. A wrapped mirror. Taller. Thinner. Older. But… he swallowed. Mutilated throat, blue face. Frostbite on her thin caved cheeks. 

Her. But- more . 

It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. As precious as the first glance of his world. 

I am a Queen of Winter. It was no silly game like Will, it was not… As simple as that. She is more than that. 

He felt a shudder move up his spine.

“Hello,” he says, simply. 

He feels the connection. Somewhere, unimportant their physical bodies were starting to rise. As was his own in his home. It was like music between them.

Henry felt - he was not sure. Awe? Yes . Terror? No . Want? Always . 

“What do you want?” She demands. 

Henry wanted so much.

“Your name,” he says simply. He could start with that. 

He tilts his head. Reaches. What comes to mind is not a name. It is a Wall  of ice. Hundreds of feet tall. At its base, wolves, wolves of every color stand. Down, low, mouths parted on gorgeous snarls and ready to rip and bite and snarl and howl-

Henry breathes. Heart a drum in him. 

Ain't that just the fucking jets, he thinks. His hands are trembling.  

The Queen of Winter holds her sword between them. The beautiful, twisted mirror bares her teeth. 

She-Wolf. 

Predator. 

“I am Sansa Mayfield,” She says, “Who are you?”

Will covers. His dim little light. Elven, his Judas, shifts closer but is still afraid.  Henry smiles. 

They should be afraid.  

“I am Henry Creel. Or, maybe Eleven would remember me as One.”

Eleven made a wounded noise.

“P-papa said there was no Number One,” She says, small and confused. 

Henry laughs. Bitter. He remembers the pain. 

“ Papa lies ,” he hisses. A universal truth. 

Sansa Mayfield stepped forward. 

“You will leave us alone,” She says, “You have my name, and that is all you will have.”

Henry stepped forward. 

Sansa did not move. 

“I need more,” he replies. 

“Men like you always want more.”

He laughed. 

“There are no men like me.”

Sansa laughed in his face. Henry felt a fury twist inside him.

“There are always men like you.”

“I will teach you how wrong you are,” he promises.

He swallows thickly. 

He is glad Will and Eleven were there. He would show them all. 

He would show them how much he had Become. And they would be with him. His Eleven, his Will, and his Queen of Winter. 

They would see the Beauty of his World. 

He promises. 

“I will see you again. Wait for me.”

Chapter Text

He’s at the hospital last, pumpkin rot on the soles of his boots, and Jim Hopper realizes that something is even more wrong. It's all the fucking people dragged into the shit storm with the Kid, and the fucking mess of last year stare back at him. But he's fucking furious when he sees unfamiliar people in the waiting room as well. They're supposed to keep the rest of the town out of this. A teenager, on his way to becoming a man, is pacing, and Hopper sees it. Fury, unrestrained, coiling in the hold of the boy’s fists, the hold of his shoulders. A little girl, red-haired, crying into her hands, as Lucas Sinclair grips her shoulder delicately. He doesn't know them at all. Vaguely remembers talk of a new family moving in. Hargroves? Mayfields? He wasn’t sure. Vaguely remembers. He thinks the name was either of those. Joy looks up at him, her hands shaking over a lit cigarette.

Why am I always last?  

“Joyce?”  

The teenage boy's head jerks to him. Lips pull back in a snarl. His body tenses.  He's a word from fucking launching at someone and swinging. His eyes narrow at the sight of him, from the bottom of his pumpkin-caked boots to the top of his head, assessing. Cornered. A fighter, if he’s ever seen one.  

“Hop!” her voice cracks, “It's Will and-”

Dr. Owen steps out from two double doors. Hopper feels his own back tense. His jaw locks. 

“Ah. Chief Hopper,” his voice is thick with stress. 

“Why are you here?”

The older man gives a helpless, self-conscious shrug. 

“I am Will's primary care physician. May I speak to you privately?”

“What’s wrong with my sister?!” demands the teenager. His voice is thick, a near growl, “Why the fuck are the cops involved- And why can’t I see her?”

The Doctor gives a smile. The sort of smile that is meant to put someone at ease. Instead, it makes the boy tensor. 

The lights above them flicker. 

Hopper tenses. Doctor Owen looks up and grimaces. He turns to the boy and gives another placid smile. 

Fuck . 

“Your sister has had a severe reaction to one of Will’s medications,” the lie is fucking thin, even to Hop’s ears, “Chief Hopper is here due to the delicate nature of Will’s situation last-”

The boy bares his teeth.

“Sansa was like ten feet away from the other kid. How the fuck did the medication affect her?” he snarls.

Hop raises his hands. 

“Son, I’m gonna need you to calm down,” he says, simply. 

He is half shocked, half not, when the boy kicks a hospital room chair. The sound is an explosion of noise in the otherwise quiet room. Everyone stares. Hopper tenses and firms up his stance. Ready to take the kid down if he has to. 

“Don’t fucking tell me to calm down!” he roars, “My little sister just had a fucking seizure!”

And there. Hopper sees it. A visceral, helpless sort of fear in the kid’s eyes. Just for a second. But he can see it. And it makes Hopper no less tense, but it does give him understanding. The kid is terrified, and his anger is a result of that. 

“Billy,” whispers the little red-head girl.

The boy, Billy, whips around. 

“Max-”

“I need to talk to you,” she whispers, “Please.”

His chest heaves. He looks back at him. Blue eyes burning. Fists flexing. The boy nods sharply before he grips the girl’s shoulder. They leave the room. 

Hopper lets go of a breath he wasn’t aware he was holding.

“What the fuck, Doc.”

“Come on,” hisses the Doctor.

Hopper follows. 

His stomach drops. The room is guarded by some government goons. He turns to Doctor Owens. Grips his white jacket and slams him into the nearest wall.

“You can’t have your guys in my hospital,” he spits, furious. 

Owens glares at him.

“We can’t let anyone see the children.”

“What the fuck is happening?!”

“... Best you see yourself, Chief.”

He drops the government slim. Growls and storms into the room. What greets him is-

Well. 

Two kids, looking awfully small in their beds. Or, not in their beds. They’re about a foot above it. Looking like the creepiest balloons, tethered slightly by belts around their ankles, their wrists. Hopper turns to Owens. 

“We untie them,” the man says, tiredly, “And they might hit the ceiling. See that bruising in their arms?”

Hopper looks. Grits his teeth. 

“That was their IVs, being yanked from their arms. And the kids need fluids, hydration, vitamins, and nutrients. They're expending a lot of energy at the moment.”

“What the hell is happening?”

“Psychic activity suggests an event has linked young Will and Sansa when they met today at 1500, in Hawkins Junior High parking lot,” Owens rattles it off, dry and serious, military man, “We suspect an environmental factor and the individuals to be affected-”

The kids fall onto the bed in the gentlest thud. Hopper tenses, even as Owens jolts forward. It’s the girl, Sansa, who wakes first. Jim isn’t sure if Owens notices it, but the girl’s eyes creep open slightly, and she watches them with only slightly open eyes for a good minute before Will gasps and attempts to jolt upwards. Jim moves forward and deliberately undoes Will’s restraints before he can truly panic. He soothes a hand against the boy’s face.

“It’s okay, Will,” he says, softly, even as he reaches across the space to untie the girl, who watches him with careful, half-lidded blue eyes, “You’re okay.”

“Where am I?” his voice is panicked.

“The hospital, Kid.”

He blinked quickly.

“There was a girl. Then- then there was screaming. Where is she?” he tries to sit up.

Hopper presses a hand on her shoulder.

“Easy,” he tells him, firm. 

A tentative hand on his wrist. Hopper nearly flinches at the gentle contact. He turns. Kid is staring at him, eyes such a shocking blue it nearly strangles a breath from him. The kid, the girl, she's wide-eyed and pretty in a devastating kind of way, gentle looking and breakable. It's made better by the gentle concern on her face. 

“There was a boy,” she says, echoing Will. Her voice is calm, serious, and her eyes are assessing him.  

“Will,” the boy blurts, clinging to Hopper's other arm, using it to drag himself up and look over to the adjacent bed, “My name is Will!”

“Hello,” she tells Will, craning around Hopper, even as she leans against his side for strength, slumping against him with a trust that makes Hopper freeze, “I'm Sansa.”

They lock eyes, and the girl, Sansa, smiles gently. Will blinks quickly, hands clawing into Hopper's arm, desperate, hand reaching out to Sansa's for what looks like a handshake. 

The IV, extra long that it is, stops him. 

He makes a quiet noise. Like a kicked dog, Jim feels the boy's hand clench around the meat of his own arm.

“Easy,” he tells the boy and the girl. 

Because she is swaying in her hospital bed, even as she reaches for Will.

She stops. Looks up at him, even as she leans on him. 

“Hello. I’m Sansa Mayfield,” she says, incredibly polite, “And your name, officer?”

“Chief Jim Hopper, Kid,” he says, gruffly.

She blinks. He blinks at her. 

“Can I see my brother and my sister?” she says, she says, quietly, “Please, sir?”

Something in him unclenches. 

“Yeah. Of course you can, Kid.”

She beams at him.