Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Spring in Hawkins wasn’t like anywhere else.

Maybe that wasn’t a fair statement to make, seeing as Mike hadn’t ever lived anywhere else, but it was one he stood by all the same. Or maybe it wasn’t the spring, but this moment, and how he could feel something was changing.

The last of the snow had finally melted away a couple of weeks ago and his mom was starting to have them pack up their winter clothes so that they could put them in the garage and make room for their summer stuff. He didn’t know why she was bothering with his clothes- at the rate he was growing, he likely wouldn’t fit into them by the time next winter rolled around.

Everything had started growing again, which he had learned wasn’t the same anywhere. El had told him that the winter in California was barely noticeable and that spring came like it was nothing. Mike wanted to ask Max if it was like that where she had lived too, but she wasn’t really talking to the party much right now. It seemed strange to him, to not be able to see the radical change between seasons, then again, he had always been a writer, wanting to see meaning in everything.

And maybe that was why this spring was so important to him, why it had him waxing almost poetic and totally pathetic. It had him filled with an almost… hope, something he didn’t want to admit to because it would sound stupid if he said it out loud.

This year had been hard, for lack of a better word, but he was trying. Max was distant and the worst part was that he couldn’t even blame her. They talked sometimes- they had a few of the same classes and they had opted to do some projects together. She had come over to his house and his mom had made snacks and she kind of laughed sometimes, and then their project would be over and then she would go back to her distance. The only other person who was able to talk to her much was Lucas, and he didn’t seem to be doing much better, at least from what Mike could tell. And it wasn’t like he had much of a chance to ask. They hadn’t been seeing each other much since Lucas started making a new life for himself.

That was harsh and, honestly, Mike knew it was unfair. Basketball wasn’t even the whole year and Lucas was still an active member of Hellfire, still lived next door, it just hurt to see him out making new friends and spending so much time away.

The late fall was always a hard time for him, but it had been for a couple of years now, and Lucas starting basketball around that time only made everything worse. He was able to hang out with Dustin, but he could tell that Dustin felt the ache as much as he did.

And the worst was that he was missing El and Will like he was missing his own limbs.

There were days he could hardly get out of bed he missed them so much. He wished he hadn’t been so stupid last summer, wasted so much time.

Hellfire was the only bright spot. The group was fun and he could just play without having to be the DM. DMing was what he liked to do the most, but he had felt his creativity zapped the past few years and he didn’t want to dwell much on why.

But this was the part where the hope had seeped in. Today was the day everything was changing. Basketball was ending- the championship game was tonight, which meant that afterwards, Lucas would be free to do Hellfire all the time, something he promised he would do. And Lucas always kept his promises. After spring break they would probably be able to squeeze in one, maybe two more campaigns before the summer and Lucas would be able to come for all of it and Mike and Dustin wouldn’t have to miss him so much even though he was right there.

And tomorrow he would be going to California and seeing Will and El.

He was nervous about it- he had never traveled that far, let alone on his own, and he also didn’t know what to expect. He hadn’t seen them in so long, he didn’t know if they were different, but he knew that the not-knowing part of that was his own fault, seeing as he had barely spoken to Will in the past eight months.

He had tried to write, but all the words just came out wrong. He was having a block, just like with his DMing. But in person, it would be better. Wil always made it better and maybe seeing him would jumpstart the apology Mike needed to get out for being a terrible friend. He would do better and tomorrow he could start over, making everything alright.

He pulled on his Hellfire shirt and headed downstairs to breakfast. His mother’s face flinched in a frown at the sight of the logo, but she didn’t say anything. His father might have said something if he had even bothered to pay attention.

Nancy had her journalism notebook out on the table and was scribbling away furiously, as she had been doing ever since she had been put in charge of the school newspaper at the beginning of the school year.

He tuned out the ensuing argument about said notebook and whether Nancy should or should not have it at the table. The argument happened every morning and he knew all the counterpoints by heart now, so he easily tuned it out and instead steadily worked his way through breakfast. If he finished fast enough, he could escape before they brought up his abysmal grades.

He finished his food and sped through brushing his teeth and he was out the door heading to Nancy’s car.

She joined him a minute later, slamming the door closed a little harder than she needed to.

“Why do you always take out your notes? You know it always causes a fight.”

She huffed, turning the car on. “I have work to do. I’m not just going to sit and do nothing when I have perfectly useable time right then.”

“Nancy, it’s the school paper, not the New York Times. The world's not going to end if they don’t know what color they're going to paint the cafeteria.”

“Shows how much you care- that was in last month’s issue. Besides, would you rather they talk about your grades?”

He stiffened. “It’s not like I'm failing.”

“Mike, you used to get all As. Now you’re barely passing.”

He looked out the window. “High school’s different.”

He felt Nancy’s eyes on him, but she didn’t say anything.

“So,” she said after a moment, “are you going to be needing a ride home? I’m going to be at the paper until late tonight covering the game at seven.”

“No, I’ve got Hellfire- wait, what do you mean the game is at seven? The basketball games are always at five.” He knew this- he and Dustin had sat through every excruciating game watching Jason run around the court while Lucas sat on the bench until the game got out and then all three of them ran over to the classroom used for Hellfire right in the nick of time.

He pulled his eyes away from the window and could see Nancy shaking her head. “It’s at seven. They moved it because it’s the championship game. I guess the other team has midterms and the school won’t let them leave early to get here.”

They pulled up to the school. “I won’t need a ride,” he called back to her and even from halfway up the walk he could see her roll her eyes.

Mike wove though the halls nearly running over Max until he got to Lucas and Dustin.

“Dude, Nancy just told me your game is at seven,” he said.

“Yeah, they announced it last week,” Lucas said, carefully neutral.

“Dude,” Dustin said, aghast. “We’re finishing the campaign today.”

“What do you want me to? It’s the championship game. I can’t just not go!”

“Sure you can, they don’t let you play anyways.”

“They might,” Lucas said, as he had been saying the whole season, but Mike could tell he didn’t quite believe it.

“Not while you’re a freshman,” Mike pointed out.

“And if I flake, they’re not going to let me play as a sophomore either,” Lucas countered.

“Ugh,” Mike said, yanking at his hair. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”

“I’m trying to do this for us,” Lucas said, gesturing between all of them. “I’m trying to get us some security, so that we’re not bullied relentlessly, you know, how we were for the last forever? And besides, I like basketball. I can like more than one thing.”

“That’s not what I’m saying and you know it.”

“You can always ask Eddie to move up the slot,” Lucas said, his eyes lighting up and Mike followed his gaze to Max. “I have to go.”

Mike looked at Dustin, who watched Max disappear around the corner with a sad look on his face.

“So… who wants to break the news to Eddie?”

🕐

Lenora, California, 1986

Joyce Byers

Joyce watched her kids head out the door to school and wished them luck on their last day until spring break.

The kids all waved goodbye, save El, who was carefully holding her project in her hands, trying not to let it get damaged. El had been working on her project for weeks now and Joyce thought the whole thing was beautiful. She had cried once or twice when she saw it when Will, El, and Jonathan were out at school. Just single tears but it made her miss Hop. She hoped it all went well today. Lord knew they needed something to.

She was trying to make it work. She thought that things would be better out here, by being as far as possible from Hawkins, but she knew it wasn’t working, not in the way that she thought it would.

El and Will were struggling. They didn’t talk about school, but Will never did much before, either. She wanted to bring it up, but every time she tried Will would just give her that sweet smile of his and tell her he was fine. El talked more, but Will was rubbing off on her a bit

And she was struggling too.

She had been used to going in for work, clocking in and walking around and correcting prices, and she had thought telemarketing would be fine, but instead she found it made her feel stir-crazy.

She had her set of Brittanica’s for her reference when she was selling, but they didn’t serve her as much use as it did for the kids. If there was anything good that came out of this new job, it was that it gave the kids access to all that information. El in particular would spend hours flipping through the pages and sometimes Will would join her when he wanted a reference for one of his pictures.

She told the kids that the new job was good, because of the hours or whatever, but it was a mess.

On the good side, Jonathan had made a friend.  A weird friend, but he was nice and good-natured, and considering the people she had known in her life, that wasn’t anything to take for granted. Jonathan wasn’t around that much, but she couldn’t begrudge him for that, not when she knew what it was like for him at Hawkins.

She forced herself to take her mind off things by getting to work. She was about three hours into her calls when the doorbell buzzed. She opened the door, the cord of the phone tangling on the side pillar. She jerked it as it caught and stopped, frowning as the cord untangled. “One moment,” she said and she set it down and grabbed the mail.

It wasn’t much, just bills and junk mail and one box. It was too big to go through the slat on the door, hence why the bell was rung.

“I’ll make the order,” her client said.

“Perfect,” she said. “And would you like the whole set?” she asked as she took the mail over to her worktable and picked up an order form to fill out.

The woman kept talking and Joyce filled out the order form as fast as she could, but the box had her intrigued.

“Thank you very much for your order, you should receive you Brittanica’s in 6-8 eight weeks. Please give me a call back if you have any questions.”

“Thank you, I will.”

She slotted the phone back in the cradle and picked up the box. The cardboard was thin- not like the kind with the big boxes. It was the flimsy kind, like the ones her new checks came in from the bank. The top was covered in Nevada stamps, but she didn’t know anyone in Nevada.

She cut open the box carefully, like she was dissecting it in surgery, and then pulled off the lid.

The thing was packed with newspaper- but not all from the same place. She saw ads and articles from Nevada, New Mexico, Arizona- all places she had never been, never knew anyone from. She wracked her brain to try to remember if any of her clients had been from that area, but she couldn’t think of any. The telemarketing company mostly only gave her local numbers, or at least confined to Southern California. But even if she had sold outside the state, none of them would have had her address.

She smoothed out the paper, to see if any if there was any pattern to the pages, but there were not. The dates weren’t even close, so she set them aside and pulled out the contents from the bottom of the box. Content, she corrected as she looked at the item that was rolling back and forth at the bottom of the box. 

It was just a pen. Black and white, a simple, basic pen she had probably seen a million times before in a million different places.

She picked it up and turned it, reading words printed on the side.

Dr. Owens. Hawkins, Indiana

She frowned, slowly placed it back in the box, staring at the wall blankly before her body switched to autopilot and took her back to her phone. 

She pulled out the address book she brought with her from Hawkins. She had considered throwing it away completely, but that was a part of her she couldn’t let go of it. It had all the kids’ friends’ numbers, and even though they had them memorized, if they ever wanted to double check, they were there.

She flipped to the M’s, down to a penciled-in entry and dialed with shaking hands.

“Hello,” a moderately irritated voice answered.

“Murray? It’s me Joyce. From Hawkins.”

“I know who you are, Joyce. We went through several life-altering events together,” he said slowly. “Is this an amnesia thing? Do you not remember who you are?  Because I really don’t want to for foray into that genre.”

“Murray, shut up. No, I didn’t lose my memories. Though maybe I lost my judgment,” she muttered.

He sighed audibly. “Is there a reason you’re calling me at… three in the afternoon. Oh, shit. I thought it was later.”

“It’s even earlier here,” she said drily. Her eyes flicked down to the box. “I just got something in the mail.”

“And I’m assuming it was something out of the ordinary in order to warrant a call?”

“It’s a pen.”

A pause and then- “Does it unscrew?”

“One second.”

She shoved the phone between her chin and shoulder and untwisted the top.

At first she didn’t see anything, but then she notices a piece of paper wrapped aound the ink cartridge. She pulled it out and unfurled it.

“It’s a set of numbers,” she said with a frown.

“Humor me and read them.”

She rattled them off and was met with stark silence.

“I’m taking the next flight out.”

🕐

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986 

Eddie Munson

Dustin dropped himself into the seat across from Eddie. The kid never asked permission for things like that, and Eddie had to admit he wasn’t mad at it. The kid had real potential at becoming the new club leader after he graduated.

“I called Steve and asked if he wanted to play. He told me no.”

Eddie groaned. This had been going on since this morning, when Dustin and Mike broke the tragic news that Lucas was going to be playing basketball, instead of joining their epic campaign for its final installment. They had asked to move the slot, but Eddie refused. It was theirs- had been since the club started- and he’d be damned if he was going to let a stupid game mess with that.

Ever since, though, the freshman had been trying to find someone to fill in in Lucas’ spot in the party.

Mike gave Dustin a look. “He doesn’t even know how to play DnD.”

“So? Who’d you ask?”

“I asked Nancy.”

“Ha! And you gave me shit.”

“Hey, at least Nancy knows how to play.”

“Yeah, like eight years ago.”

“It’s not rocket science, Dustin. It’s not like the rules changed.”

Eddie watched the volley between them with amusement. He never expected the older Wheeler to play, but he didn’t know a Steve. All the Steves he knew were old except-

“Wait, Steve, as in Steve Harrington?”

Dustin looked at him like he was stupid. “Yeah? We hang out with Steve all the time.”

“You hang out with Steve. Harrington,” he said again, just to make sure he wasn’t losing his mind.

“And Lucas and Max, too, when she’s not off doing whatever.”

Eddie slouched back in his chair. He had heard them mention Steve- quite a lot, if he was being honest about it- but he never really allowed himself to make that connection. The whole idea of Steve Harrington, King of Hawkins High, hanging out with a bunch of kids who were… not even in high school at the same time as him- what the fuck?- was crazy. He remembered, distantly, that Steve had dated Nancy Wheeler a few years ago, so maybe that was a factor in all of… this. He was not a willing recipient of that information, but it had been impossible to ignore, what with all the drama it stirred up.

Nancy Wheeler was first and foremost a huge nerd but people really started paying attention to her when she not-so-secretly started dating Steve and then her best friend disappeared. Things only escalated when Steve started a fight with Jonathan Byers of all people, a bigger outcast than Eddie had ever been because at least Eddie had Hellfire and the band. Jonathan had no one, opting to spend all his time in the school’s dark room.

And then Nancy broke up with Steve very publicly at some party that Eddie heard about secondhand from some guys who were buying weed afterwards. Then she had gotten with Byers and then there had been some sort of clash royale between Steve and Billy and then Billy was dead in the mall explosion and now everything had been normal for about a year and also extremely boring.

But even if Steve had dated Wheeler, that didn’t explain why Steve befriended his ex-girlfriend’s brother’s friends. He looked across the table to see if Dustin was going to expand on that, but he didn’t, already cycling through other people they could ask to join their game tonight.

But that was fine, Eddie would just live in this mist of mystery because there was no way he was going to outright ask what all that was about.

“Wait,” Dustin’s eyes lit up in the middle of their bickering. “I know someone.” Mike must have had the same thought because he got out of his chair just as fast and then they were gone.

Eddie sighed. It was still early into lunch, so the table was empty. Jeff and Gareth wouldn’t be joining until halfway thought the period. He didn’t much like being alone so he got up and walked around until he found an interesting one and dropped himself down into the seat, leaning back leisurely.

“Hey Robin.”

Her band clothes were draped over her backpack and a ruffly bib was sitting on the table beside her while she ate her lunch and worked on homework.

She looked up from her homework over to him, quirking a brow. “I’ve told you before, if you’re dealing I will not be a go-between for you and the fuckheads in band.”

He sat up in his seat and laughed. “No, I know. You made it pretty clear the last time, and I respect it. It's not fair for you to get caught holding the bag if it all goes to shit.”

“Which it would,” she pointed out. “You know what Jessica and John are like.”

Which, fair. They were the worst kind of customers- indecisive and annoying. And stingy. They always tried to haggle the price down, and never seemed to get that if he wasn’t offering a discount, they weren’t getting one.

“Though,” he said, “it you ever want some for yourself, you know you can reach out to me. It might help you loosen up,” he nodded at the extensive stack of books in front of her. It looked like several language books- Spanish, Latin, and… Russian?

“Thanks, but no thanks. I’m pretty anti-getting-high at the moment.”

“What, bad trip?”

“Something like that,” she said, offering him a sort of dark, twisted smile. It was weird, but Robin was pretty weird, always had been.

She was one of the other outsiders at the school, just like Jonathan was before he moved to fuck-knows-where, except Robin had band.

Damn, he didn’t know why he was thinking about Jonathan Byers so much. He had hardly ever talked to him and didn’t know anything about him other than the fact that he had a crazy mom and his younger brother was the kid who had gone missing for a week a couple years back.

Maybe that was why. The freshmen would always talk about Will and how he apparently loved DnD as much as his friends did. The player shortage must be getting to him more than he thought.

“You doing your homework stuff?”

She nodded. “They’re sending in correspondence stuff because they say they can’t keep up.”

He howled, leaning back to hoot at the ceiling. “Robin Buckley, bringing the institution to its knees.”

She shook her head but she was laughing.

“Hey you still stuck going to the game tonight?”

“Unfortunately. Can’t wait to see us lose. Again.”

“Hey, they might win,” he joked.

She shrugged. “They might,” she indulged. “I know that Lucas has been waiting for a chance to play before the season goes out.”

His brows shot up a bit that Robin knew Lucas but he let it go. She had been going to all the games, of course she knew the players. “And if they do win, you can go along to whatever afterparty they have.”

“No thanks. I’m not interested in watching a bunch of jocks chug beer. I might do something else, depends on how the night goes.”

“My, my, my, does Robin Buckley have a hot date?”

“Not a date, just a friend.”

“Really? You’ve always come across as very relationships-in-high-school-don’t-last.”

“Yeah, well. Maybe friendships do,” she shrugged.

“Who is the lucky person?” he asked. He had never seen Robin interact with many people outside of the band, and even then those relationships elicited more eyerolls than conversation. It didn’t help that half the band was insufferable.

She rolled her eyes. “Steve.”

“Steve?” he questioned and then his eyes went wide. “Steve Harrington?” Damn, he was starting to sound like a broken record today.

“I know. If you had told me a year ago, I wouldn’t have believed me either, I hated his guts. But we worked together last summer and now…” she trailed off with a shrug.

“Ladies-man Steve Harrington wanted to be friends. He didn’t ask you out?”

“He did. And I said no. He took it super well. Like, he was fine immediately after so I don’t think it was that serious. Honestly, I think that Dustin was pushing him to make a move because he’s still trying to get us together.”

“Well, I’ll be damned. What isn’t that guy in the middle of?”

“You’d be surprised,” she said, drinking her water.

He glanced across the cafeteria and saw the rest of the group heading in.

“I’m afraid that’s my queue,” he said, nodding off in the direction of the other table. “Hope you don’t die of boredom, Buckley.”

“I’ll try,” she said drily, and then he was off.

🕐

Lenora, California, 1986

Will Byers

Will felt himself shrinking to the back of the courtyard.

Today had been a shit day so far, and if the way Angela was stalking up to El was any indicator, it was only going to get worse.

First there had been the presentation, which had been terrible because although El made it look nice, it was apparently wrong. Mrs. Gracey had apologized after class for the unclear instructions, but the damage had already been done. And then one of his classmates tried flirting with him, which just made El give him a knowing look and made him feel worse.

He should be glad. He should be ecstatic that people looked at him and the first thing they though was that he was straight, but it just made him uncomfortable.

He watched as Angela shoved El to the ground, the way everyone laughed, and the way El told Ms. Gracey nothing had happened. And something about that sent a stabbing feeling through his chest.

Ms. Gracey pulled Angela away and he propelled himself forward until he shifted into El’s space and she saw him, looking relieved.

He nodded away from Angela and her cronies to some shaded trees.

He glanced around, wishing Jonathan was there so he could ask what to do, but he was nowhere to be found- unsurprising since seniors could take lunch off campus, but still he hoped. But if he had been here, Will doubted he would be in any state to step in.

Even though Jonathan would never admit it and actually tried to cover it up a lot, Will knew he was out getting high nearly every day.

Most of the time he wasn’t too high, just enough that he would sit dazed and distant, not really thinking about anything at all. And maybe Will was selfish, but he missed his brother being there. He missed teasing him after school, he missed him being this solid presence beside him. It wasn’t the same. It was selfish for him to want things to be the same. He tried stopping by and talking to him, but it wasn’t the same when his eyes were vacant and he wasn’t really there.

And then the guilt would compound because Jonathan deserved not to have to think about this, what had happened. He didn’t deserve it, he didn’t deserve to put up with everything Will had put him through. Everyone tried to act like it was okay now, but he knew it wasn’t, because he knew if the same thing had happened to Jonathan, he would have never been able to forget it. It would have wrecked him.

“I hate Lenora,” El whispered vehemently. “I wish we could go back to Hawkins.” He nodded, giving her half of his clementine.

He didn’t know if he missed Hawkins, exactly- he didn’t know if there would ever be a place he missed, because he was sure he was destined to not fit in anywhere- but he did miss his friends.

They tried to keep in touch, but every day Will worried they were slipping further and further away, though maybe that was all nerves because he was supposed to see Mike tomorrow.

He sighed, looking down at the peel of his fruit and wondered when everything got so hard.

🕐

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Eddie Munson

Eddie jumped off the table. The rest of the cafeteria didn’t seem all that interested in his speech, but it wasn’t for them. They could keep living their cookie-cutter, pop music, forced conformity, mundane-until-they-die lifestyle if they wanted to, so long as they didn’t bother him about his own life.

Everybody had gone back to eating their lunches and talking about who was fucking who but he caught a pair of eyes watching him from across the cafeteria and head of soft, sandy blond hair.

Chrissy was watching him, not with the hard judgmental eyes that her boyfriend or one of his cronies would look at him with, like they wanted to say something, challenge him (but they wouldn’t, wouldn't do more than call him a freak, because, despite the fact that Eddie was solidly an outsider, he was nearing twenty, something these jocks weren’t willing to fuck with. Hargrove, maybe, if he was still here and he actually cared about anything other than the basketball team and trying to outshine Steve Harrington, the quintessential suburban prince charming. Gag).

Jason was no Billy Hargrove- may his soul rot in every pit of Hell- but his hatred towards Eddie was more than the apathy he got from everyone else. Jason’s dislike for him was more personal, probably because Eddie actually knew his girlfriend.

Now Chrissy was watching him like she knew him, like she wanted to talk to him, even though they hadn’t talked to each other- really talked to each other- since middle school.

They had been friends back then. Maybe they still were. He didn’t know the intricacies of friendships with pretty girls you wish had stuck around.

Chrissy looked away like she was hurt, staring down at the table pretending to pay attention to whatever stupid thing was likely coming out of her stupid boyfriend’s mouth. She was always good at playing that roll. Sweet, docile, perfect. Someone who never wanted anything of their own.

He dropped back down into his seat, the wind blown a bit out of his sails. He had only looked at her for maybe five seconds but it still made him feel off-kilter in a way that anything that had to do with Chrissy always did.

The day went on in a blur and then it was done.

They all filed out of their classes and he stopped by his locker because he really was trying to pass Ms. O’Donnell’s class this year. If he had to take the same class and read the same basic stories one more time, he was going to blow his brains out.

Despite that, he felt his energy pick back up, the campaign he had planned for today bouncing around his head like a pinball for the last hour.

He unlocked his locker and shoved most of his class crap in there, but not before something caught his eye. On top of the one book he bothered to keep in his locker was a folded-up piece of paper, most likely shoved through the slats at the top of his locker. This wasn’t all that uncommon. He was the unofficial dealer of Hawkins High and had maintained that title for the past six years he had been here.

Picnic table behind the school, please. 3:00. Thank you, the message read and he frowned.

This wasn’t the scribble of the people he usually dealt to, which looked more like chicken scratch. This was softer, girlier. He frowned and shoved the note in his pocket and made a mental note to go to his usual spot. He may not know who it was but they obviously knew the best place to do business.

The school had cleared out fast, people heading home to get ready for the big game this afternoon, so the space out back was perfect for a meet-up.

He cut through the clearing and almost stopped in his tracks when he saw who it was.

Chrissy was at there, her put-together cheerleading uniform and sweater a stark contrast to the worn picnic table and the dirt and leaves.

“Chris?” he asked and she looked up at him, with her wide doe eyes. “I have to say I wasn’t expecting to see you here,” he said, offering her a smile, trying to lighten the mood. She had that same haunted look in her eye that she had had at lunch, but now it was dissolving into something nervous.

“Hi Eddie,” she said with a small smile.

“Hey,” he said easily. “I’d ask if you wanted to chat but I'm guessing you want to buy?”

She hesitated, before she nodded.

She looked at him with this sort of wistfulness, like she was missing something. He didn’t know what it was, didn’t know if he wanted to look into it too much. For some reason it hurt too much. Because if he thought too much about it, he would remember when she made her choice to be popular, and he couldn’t even blame her because if she stayed with him it would have been social suicide and her mother would have never forgiven her and would have made Chrissy shrivel in on herself. 

The few times he had met Chrissy’s mom, he had known what true hatred was. How someone could be so cruel to someone so kind and gentle felt like some sort of crime. She crushed Chrissy underneath her shoe, always beating her down and making her feel small. And he hated that about her.

But he didn’t allow himself to think of Mrs. Cunningham and he definitely didn’t let himself think of Chrissy, because if he did long enough, he would imagine spending high school with her and her soft laugh and would wonder if maybe he wouldn’t have turned so hard and bitter with time, if Chrissy wouldn’t have turned out so sad. He didn’t want to go down that road, though, so he changed the subject.

“You looking to relax a little?” he asked, climbing over the bench on his side of the table and dropped down across from her. “I have a pretty good selection. The guy I get it from grows it himself, nothing laced in it.”

“How much?”

“Usually about $5, but if you want more or less we can-”

“No,” she shook her head. “How much does it relax you?”

“Oh,” he said, and he could hear alarm bells ringing in his head. “like a spa. Or I’m guessing- I’ve never been- a day at the beach, maybe? Though I’ve also never been to the beach.”

She giggled, lightening up a bit. He missed that smile.

She sobered soon enough, though. “Do you have anything stronger?”

Eddie looked at her, really looked at her. Because this was obviously Chrissy’s first time doing anything with drugs, not unless she was secretly popping pills, and if she was doing that, she would have probably just gone to whoever was giving her that stuff to begin with, not going to the local weed guy.

Because the thing was, Chrissy was a sweet girl. He knew that had no bearing on whether or not someone did drugs, but she was the kind so sweet that she never even said something mean because she didn’t want to hurt anyone, she always followed all the rules because that was the right thing to do. He knew she joined the cheerleading squad partially because she wanted to make other people happy. She wouldn’t be out here breaking the law over nothing.

“How much stronger?” he asked. “I don’t sell H.”

She shook her head. “Not that,” she said. “I just… don’t want to be able to think.”

He stared at her. And instead of asking her if she was okay, instead of caving in and acting like a normal fucking human being, he nodded and said “I have some K at my place,” like a coward.

“Is it safe?” she asked, but she was no longer looking at him, eyes fixed on the forest behind him.

He nodded. “Yeah. It’s the straight stuff. I’ll be home around nine, if you want to meet me there. Or we can meet here, if you want.”

She tore her eyes away from the trees, that haunted look back stronger than ever. “Let’s meet at your place,” she said with a frail smile. “You still live in the same place?”

He nodded.

🕐

Lenora, California, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan sat in the pizza van, waiting for El and Will to show up to take them home.

He had heard some rumors about a fight but he hadn’t been able to hear much about it, or, at least, he hadn’t really been able to remember it all that well. He had gotten high over lunch with Argyle to help him sail through the rest of the day.

He was sober now, but he was itching to get home, to smoke or to ask what happened, he wasn’t sure.

He had been trying to help El adjust but it was a long process.

He remembered when they had first moved out to California, the days stretched out long and anxious as they waited for school to start. They had finished unpacking and he realized with a start that he didn’t know what El liked. “What do you like to do El?”

She shrugged. “I like TV, I guess. But I do not like to do that all of the time. In the cabin we did not have much besides that.”

“Well, what about music?” he asked.

“I- I don’t know much music.”

And if there was anyone who wanted people to find what they liked, damn what other people thought about it, it was Jonathan. He still remembered the times he had told Will that he should like things no matter if anyone else liked them. That it was cool that he liked the arcade and DnD, even if Jonathan didn’t really get them.

“And, I like to dance, I think. Hopper and I- we danced one time, when we were cleaning the cabin. I liked that,” she said, happy and sad at the same time.

“Not the cleaning though.”

She laughed. “No, I do not like cleaning.” They had all split chores with mom to help things go more smoothly. Jonathan didn’t like them either, but they weren’t too bad, not between the four of them. 

Jonathan made it his mission to find things for El to like. He even drove them out to go hiking, which was a bust, but it was worth the effort and it meant that he got to spend three hours with Will and El without feeling the need to get high, the day melting away easily.

But today was a hard day and he could feel his mind wearing thin.

The thing was that Nancy was the only one he could really talk to any of this about. He loved his mom, but she worried and he couldn’t do that to her and Will- Will was his younger brother, he was supposed to protect him, not pile his problems on his shoulders, even if Will would have taken them without a second thought.

Nancy had been through the same thing he had, for the most part. He could talk to her, but it was hard when he was in California because they couldn’t physically see each other. They sent letters sometimes, but they were both in senior year and busy. They tried to call, but every attempt was tainted by what they knew about government surveillance. They talked on the phone, because they couldn’t be apart like that, but it wasn’t the same. And his mom was on the phone all the time so they could barely talk anyways, what between all the time Mike and El talked to each other. Will seemed as miserable as Jonathan felt but Jonathan tried to drown that feeling with the weed.

Drowning, he thought, watching as the smoke curled around his fingers. It hates the water. Sometimes he thought about laying down in the bathtub, if he stayed in the cold water long enough it would kill the demons in his head all the time.

It felt like he was stagnant, like he was floating in water, barely able to tread. He wasn’t sure how to move forward, if he even wanted to right now. He hadn’t told Nancy or his mom or Will about not planning to go to college. El didn’t really understand college, so he was saved from having to explain it to her.

“You’ve always wanted to go to NYU, Jonathan,” Mom would have said and she’d have looked so sad Jonathan wouldn’t be able to look at her anymore.

He didn’t know what he wanted anymore. He didn’t want a future. He didn’t want to leave his family, he couldn’t leave them- money was tight as it was, but he couldn’t be here in this.

It was just for this year, he told himself. When school let out for the summer, he would be able to work and  he would do that. He would double down and spend all his days working and then on this…

He would get better. He just needed a year. He was just slipping a little now, but he was there enough, if needed

Will had always been able to count on Jonathan. Even though he was distant now, he knew, if it came down to it, Jonathan would be there for him in an instant.’

In a year he would be back to himself. His car would be fixed, he’d talk to Nancy, he’d have a job. It’s just a year.

🕐

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Lucas Sinclair

He couldn’t believe what was happening. First that he was on the court, and now that he was running, the ball pounding against the floor has he dribbled.

He came to stop and he caught the ball, the last seconds ticking away, and he threw it, the ball flying off his fingertips.

He watched in what felt like slow motion as the ball sailed towards the hoop and the felt the rush when the ball fell through the hoop.

The buzzer sounded and everyone was cheering.

His teammates were all slapping his shoulders in congratulations, unable to contain their excitement, and he felt the buzz, too, in his bones.

The people were coming off the stands and his parents were there, his father waving his arms emphatically as he recounted it all, Lucas smiling. His mother was hugging him despite how sweaty he was.

Steve came by and pulled him in for a hug, his date abandoned behind him, telling him how awesome his shot was.

The team was clamoring behind him about a party, his parents telling him he could go, but his eyes scanned the bleachers, looking and looking and looking, but he couldn’t find who he was looking for. He loved his family, but he felt a pang when he didn’t see Dustin or Mike or Max.

He felt numb as he turned back to the team, smile plastered to his face as they left together to drown the night in cheap beer.

🕐

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Eddie Munson

Eddie was still riding high after the epic win at Hellfire.

How could he not be? A Nat 20, right in the nick of time. Something for the history books. He drove home, without much thought of anything else. He was going to be sorry about the fact that he wouldn’t be in the club anymore by the time Erica was able to join, but alas, that was just the way it was sometimes.

He wanted to hang out longer, but the kids had to go home- Mike had to meet his mysterious awesome girlfriend who lived in California that he half-believed was made up, along with the freshmen’s friend, Will, the one that had gone missing years ago. 

Besides, he had somewhere to be as well.

He wasn’t sure if he really expected Chrissy to come, if he actually wanted her to. There had been plenty of time for her to change her mind- there was also a chance she didn’t remember exactly where he lived- it had been a while. Even if she didn’t change her mind she was obviously in a fucked-up headspace. And if she really was resorting to this, he wondered if he should ask her what was wrong.

But whether he was prepared for it or not. Chrissy was there on his doorstep. 8:55, early. He couldn’t help but laugh silently to himself. How very Chrissy of her.

She must have come straight from the game he realized. The game had ended just as Hellfire had- he knew this because he had had a hell of a time trying to get out of the parking lot. From the lot he had gone straight home. She was still wearing her uniform. If she had beat him here, that meant she didn’t even stick around to congratulate her boyfriend on the championship, though from the chatter he heard leaving the gymnasium, the win was due to Sinclair.

“Hi,” she said, waving as much as she could with her hands jammed into the pockets of her jacket. “The game just got out so I came right over. Guess I was a bit early.”

“No, its fine,” he said. “I heard it was a good one,” he said, unlocking the door to the trailer letting her in. “Welcome to my uncle’s place.”

“I remember it,” she smiled fondly. “You were starting to move in with him back in middle school, right? I came over once or twice.”

He nodded. “Yeah. Extra play practice,” he said pointing at her and she giggled.

She looked over at the mugs hanging on the wall, running her finger lightly along the bottom of them. “I was surprised to see you didn’t join theater in high school.”

He shrugged. “I think I got tired of trying to play some role. Didn’t want to have to do it on my off-time too.”

She smiled, ruefully. “No, I guess not. You do your DnD club, though, right?”

“Yeah. I’m surprised that’s on your radar.”

“You gave a pretty big speech at lunch,” she laughed, “kind of hard to miss. Besides I’ve seen the shirt,” she gestured to the one he was wearing, “and I’ve seen the flyers around school. Sinclair’s a part of your group, too, isn’t he?”

“Yeah. He’s great. Not crazy that he’s gone to the dark side aka high school team spirit, but I suppose we all have our vices.”

She nodded. “He’s a sweet guy. I like when he hangs out with us. He’s such a breath of fresh air.”

“You know you could come and sit with us too,” he offered and he immediately wanted to take it back, just to save himself from the rejection.

“Maybe,” she said softly. “I’m afraid I don’t know much about DnD, though. I think it requires a bit more creativity than I have.”

I can’t be seen with you she couldn’t say but he understood it anyway. He felt the pressures to give in, conform, but he had shrugged them off a long time ago, he could only imagine how much stronger they would have gotten over time, the longer they stayed bound to the conformity.

“I still have that band, too,” he said instead. “The freshmen don’t come that often, you know, ‘cause they can’t drive but you can, it you want.”

“I didn’t know you still played,” she smiled wryly. “Corroded Coffin, right?”

“Wouldn’t give it up for the world,” he grinned. “Let me know if you come, I’ll play you something.”

“Really?”

“I pick things up pretty fast. You can choose any song from my heavy metal rolodex”

She shook her head. “How were you able to do it?”

“What?”

“Stay you,” she gestured to him in his entirety. “They always have a way of crushing people, making them all conform.”

“Not everybody does.”

She actually laughed. “What, like Nancy Wheeler? No one can do what she does. I still don’t know how she does what she does. Her best friend died, she dated Steve Harrington and then Jonathan Byers, just whoever she wants, and then she’s super involved with all that journalism stuff. It seems like she’s dead-set on getting out of here.”

“I think she is,” he had met her in passing a few times, once when she was getting a quote for the school newspaper about Hellfire, other times when she was picking up Mike. She had this unflinching steel about her, something that was starting to show though in Mike. “Maybe that makes it easier for her, knowing she doesn’t have to stay.”

“Is it easy for you?”

“Yes, but not for the same reason. I just don’t care what people think, though maybe she’s the same.”

“You’re not leaving? Touring the world with your band?”

He laughed. “I think we both know that I’m not leaving Hawkins.”

“You and me both,” she said, a little bitter.

“I think you could leave,” he said. “If you wanted to.”

“I think we both know I can’t,” she said. “I don’t think it’s going to end up like that for me.”

He tried to remember, back to middle school, if she ever said anything about what she wanted to be when she grew up. Their drama teacher had tried to get them to become actors, to pursue Broadway or Hollywood, even though they all knew that was never going to happen. He had said he would be a rockstar, which his teacher encouraged, but Chrissy never said anything. Always sitting politely in the back, always quiet. How had he not noticed how crushed her spirit already was, even back then?

“Hey,” he said. “We can both do that. I’m going to graduate this year and you’re going to get out of this town. Maybe just Indianapolis, but you can.”

“You really think we could?” her tone was skeptical, but almost hopeful.

“I know we can. I’ll even pinky promise.”

“You’re going to hold me to this?”

“That’s what friends are for, don’t you think?”

“You still think of us as friends?”

He felt a wave of fear, but he tamped it down. “I mean, we never officially stopped, I guess. We don’t have to-”

“No,” she said hurriedly. “I want to be friends. I never wanted to stop being friends. I’m just so…”

“Scared?” He offered, shedding his bravado.

She looked at him. “You are too?”

“All the fucking time.”

A silence fell between the two of them, heavy.

“That's why I need this,” she said quietly.

“Chrissy I’m not going to tell you not to, but are you sure? This isn’t like you.”

She laughed and she looked on the verge of crying. “What if I don’t want to be like I am?”

He settled down beside her. “I’d say that would be pretty hard, because who we are is all we can really be.”

The silence fell over them and it was a long moment before she spoke again.

“Do you remember the play, Romeo and Juliet?”

The memories came back, faded and warm, but fond with age. He felt the ghost of a smile cross his lips. “Of course I do.”

“I liked who I was back then before I- I wish I hadn’t changed to be what everybody else wanted me to be. I wish I did what you did. Just stuck it out.”

“It wasn’t easy,” he said laughing but there was no humor. “Hey, it’s okay. You didn’t get rid of all of you,” he said. “You’re still kind. I remember that from back then. When you asked me to meet I thought she’s so scary now, so popular. But then you were just like we were back in drama class.”

“I wish we had been friends instead of running away.”

“You don’t seem very happy Chris,” he said, starting to feel worried.

“I’m not,” she said and then she was crying in earnest

Chrissy grabbed his hand.

“I shouldn't have run away,” she pleaded. “I should have stayed, been brave instead of pretending to be some perfect person that everybody else wanted me to be. I was scared.”

“Chris-” he said and she cried.

“I'm so tired of disappointing people.”

No words of comfort came to him because what could he say. He had met her mom, couldn’t control her thoughts

“Do you still want..?”

She nodded. “But can I- can I stay here while I do it? I don’t want to be home.”

He nodded. “Yeah, and Chrissy,” he said, “you know you can come by any time you want. My uncle probably still remembers you. He’d let you in.”

He went to his room digging through everything, trying to find where he kept his ketamine, but he couldn’t find it, no matter where he looked. Now he got what his uncle was saying about living in a pigsty- but in his defense it hadn’t really been a problem before now.

He could feel the minutes ticking by and he worried she would get impatient, leave or something. Worried about what she would end up doing, if not this.

And then he remembered where he put it and he dug past all the clothes on his desk until he found the metal lunchbox. There was vial of in there.

“I found it,” he called and he jogged down the hall.

The lights flickered and he frowned until he turned into the living room.

There was a cold feeling in the air and he felt his gut drop to his knees instantly.

Something was wrong.

Chrissy was staring out at nothing, her eyes gaunt and empty.

“Chrissy?” he said, taking a step closer. “Chrissy?” he asked, putting his hand on her shoulder.

She screamed and she flung up towards the ceiling. Her screams curdled and then her eyes turned to blood and every bone in her body snapped and twisted.

Eddie watched the moment the life left her body, heard every sickening crunch, until he couldn’t hear it over his screams.

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Chief Calvin Powell

For the first time in his tenure as Chief of Police, Calvin Powell woke up before his alarm.

He wasn’t sure if it was all that impressive, considering he had had the position less than a year, but it was notable because he was woken by the phone instead.

“Who is that?” his wife asked blearily. She eyed the clock before rolling over and burying her face back in the pillow. “Who could be calling at this hour?”

He sat up groggily and reached for the phone.

“Powell.”

“Chief.” It was Florence. He sat up straighter. “You need to come down to the station as soon as possible.”

“And this can’t wait until I come in?”

“Chief, Chrissy Cunningham has been murdered.”

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Mike didn’t like airplanes, he decided, but they were a necessary evil.

He let himself think absently, while gripping the armrest of the plane, about what it would have been like to drive out here, a car of his own, a license under his name instead of being half a year from his permit. In his fantasy, Dustin, Lucas, and Max were in the car with him, and they were taking turns driving out to the West Coast.

They could drive all over Lenora, all over the state. El said that people drove everywhere here. They had bikes but it wasn’t the same as it was in Hawkins, but she hadn’t learned how to ride a bike for herself yet, so he wanted to know from someone who- he wondered if Will-

A sickening pang hit his chest, and he tried to tear his mind away from him- all the words that hadn’t been spoken, all the things he chose not to say. The guilt twisted his guts and he tried to shove it all down.

He got off the plane and was relieved to find that the Lenora airport was fairly small. Max said that LAX was a nightmare, which he supposed was supposed to mean something, but he didn’t know enough about California for it to mean much.

He heard it was warm and his mother had been excited about him going. She had used it as an excuse to take him out shopping, helping him pick out something to wear. It felt wrong on his skin, off, but he supposed his mom was living vicariously through him and if it made her happy, who was he, really, to say no to her? He could wear something once. Especially, he thought, looking in the mirror at the loud ensemble, when no one else had to see. He felt like he was getting too old for it all, but Will and El wouldn’t judge him.

He had seen the way his mom brought up California, a sort of wistfulness in her voice. He wasn’t sure if it was California itself- she wasn’t super close with Ms. Byers and she had stopped swimming last summer- or just the prospect of leaving Hawkins. Dad had just turned his newspaper to the next page whenever it came up.

He scanned the airport and it did not take long until he spotted them.

It was easy to see them- they were the only group of teenagers alone in the airport. He saw El but he almost didn’t recognize her with how long her hair was now. He smiled widely at her, gripping the bouquet he picked for her tightly in his fists.

Jonathan was there too and a guy with even longer hair than El, and then there was Will and he felt his mouth go dry and he couldn’t trust himself to speak.

For all intents and purposes, he looked the same. Same haircut- not as cute as it was when they were little, but he couldn’t say that he minded all that much-, plaid flannel, plain pants (and, wow he should have dressed warmer if everyone was wearing layers), but there was something different too. He looked older. He didn’t have the same innocence about him, like his face had finally caught up with the horrors his mind had experienced, but he didn’t look worn down by it, and he smiled easily.

El caught his arm and Mike immediately felt like he was thrown off-kilter.

They sped through the greetings but he could barely process any of it. He wanted to scream, to smile, to go numb. He wasn’t really sure what he was feeling, which wasn’t all that unusual these days.

His emotions had been a wreck lately, which his mom chalked-up to hormones, which maybe it was, but something about it all just felt… worse. He smiled sometimes, more when he was playing DnD with Hellfire, but other times he felt more snappish and sometimes when he caught himself in the bathroom, his face looked gaunt, haunted, which wasn’t even fair because if El and Will could smile then he could too.

Why was it just so damn hard?

“We have so many plans!” El said excitedly. “We’re going to the roller rink and Joyce said we can even order pizza for dinner!”

“Wow, that’s cool,” he said, smile coming easily at once, already intoxicated by her enthusiasm. His eyes slid over to Will. “Is it the same as Hawkins?”

Will snorted, smiling himself and Mike felt so much relief to see it. “It’s way better here. Argyle works for the pizza place.”

“Surfer Bros,” Argyle said as they exited the airport, arms showing off the flashy van like he was Vanna White.

Mike nodded, piling into the back of the van with everyone else.

It was a tight fit, but it wasn’t too bad. El was telling him all about Lenora, pointing out shops and parks out the window, all while Will looked on fondly

Argyle pulled up in front of a large building and shifted the car into park.

“We’ll be back around noon, yeah,” Jonathan said eyes lingering on Will a moment longer than everyone else. Mike frowned and looked at Will, but his face gave away nothing, almost scarily blank aside for the glare he was fixing in Jonathan’s direction.

“Yes,” El said excitedly and that was the last Mike had to dwell on anything before he was pulled out of the van and into the roller rink.

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan sat in the back of the pizza van, joint in hand as he smoked lazily with Argyle. They had dropped the kids off at the roller rink a half an hour ago, which meant it was still a few hours out before they had to go back to pick them up. He wanted to take them somewhere nice for lunch for Will’s birthday, but he hadn’t gotten the chance to ask, he thought bitterly.

El had already planned out the rest of day and Will wouldn’t let anyone disrupt the plans for him. But maybe lunch could be fit in. He knew if El had realized it was Will’s birthday she would have immediately demanded they do something. Jonathan should have pointed it out, but he hadn’t.

He had been really bad saying what he needed to say these days.

“You doing okay man?” Argyle asked lazily, but his eyes were sharp, despite the weed. For as laid-back as he was, he certainly wasn’t stupid.

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he asked, feigning ignorance.

“You don’t wish Nancy came with little Wheeler?”

“She couldn’t come,” he said. And it was true. She was in the last stretch as newspaper editor, three more issues that had to be perfect so she could send them off in her final portfolio. “It’s stupid to want things I can’t have.”

And Jonathan wasn’t stupid, but it was such a filthy lie, to pretend he didn’t want. because he wanted too much still, even in this drug-washed haze.

He wanted things for himself. Badly. He wanted his family to be safe, he wanted him mom to be able to take a shift off of work without having to worry about having enough money to keep food on the table or the electricity on. He wanted her to be able to go on vacation somewhere, like Cincinnati or Chicago. He wanted her to have someone who loved her like Bob did, like Hopper did, but they couldn’t have that.

He wanted to never see Lonnie again, which was easier here in California, but not a guarantee. He wanted to erase him from their past so that Will, his mom, him, never had to deal with one more of his hurtful words, or his volatile temper. Lonnie hadn’t really hit them but he would throw things at the wall, break things. Jonathan had been slammed back into a wall to make a point, his mom had been too. He knew even though she never told him. He never told her either.

Lonnie hadn’t touched Will, at least as far as he knew, but maybe he had and Will had decided to keep that to himself, too.

He wanted Will to be happy, that the truth of his secret wouldn’t isolate him forever, but Jonathan knew things would never be easy for him. Even if his friends accepted him- Jonathan knew he and Mom already did- the world wasn’t kind to queer people. It was violent and cruel and Will would probably never be able to hold his boyfriend’s hand in public, or stand too close to him. He would have to smother himself, censor himself in order to survive, and Will deserved better than to spend his whole life hiding.

And Jonathan wanted for himself too, and that was the most painful of all those things to admit. He wanted to go to NYU. His mom had known it was his dream but reality had been sinking in more and more every day and he knew he couldn’t have it, probably ever. Not for photography.

And he wanted Nancy. He wanted her there, he wanted to talk to her- really talk to her- in person. He wanted her to sit at the foot of his bed, with that soft smile, he wanted her pacing back and forth across his room ranting about some injustice she was going to rectify (and she would, she had always been a big picture kind of person, she had never let anything stop her). He missed having her in his bed- and not even just for sex or kissing, but because he missed her warmth and the sweet flowery scent of her shampoo, and how soft her hair was all the time.

And more than anything, he wanted to stop wanting all of this.

He shook his head and took another hit, letting the smoke fill his lungs and cloud his mind.

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

El Hopper

El was determined for this day to be a success.

She had been planning everything out for weeks now, and this was something she had a shot at actually being good. She knew Mike. He wasn’t like school or stupid Angela and her friends that she just couldn’t understand, no matter how hard she tried. And she had been trying.

She had studied hard in school, breezing through math and picking though English, but she was getting better. She practiced art and did fine in PE, but she was also trying to like things, to be normal, or normal enough.

After they moved to California, Will and Jonathan took up where Max left off and taught her about different things people liked. They took her to the movies and Will showed her a show called Star Trek, which was very cool. There was a guy in it that talked a lot like she did and that made her feel… happy for some reason.

“He talks like me,” she said, leaning closer to the screen, trying to touch it.

“People are different all over the place. It makes you feel like you don’t stick out so much,” he had said, like he didn’t fit either. She never saw him at school before California, but she knew about the mouth breathers that were mean to Lucas, Dustin, and Mike. They were mean to Will too, Mike had told her. She didn’t think they were mean to him here, but he kind of tried to hide here, except when he talked to her.

Will was taller than her now, by a lot, but most of the time when they were out, he was more hunched, like he was hiding. But then he would see her and he would tell her about his project for history class and he wasn’t like that anymore. She knew that feeling, like he was ashamed and he just wanted to disappear.

“They are like a party,” she had said, glancing over her shoulder to check with Will to make sure she said that right. He nodded enthusiastically.

“Yeah, but instead of fighting with magic, they fight with, like, science and stuff in the future.”

“That is cool,” she said and she watched it more. These people didn’t have powers but they were still able to save people all over the universe.

Jonathan sometimes drove them to school and he would play the radio, all sorts of different songs.

Music was something she found herself getting into more and more. Jonathan and Will were very passionate about it. She didn’t know much about all they were talking about, but she knew how it made her feel.

She liked the poppy music she had listened to with Max, as it was the best for dancing. Not the barely-moving dancing at the Snow Ball that was so serious, but the jumping around, shaking her hair kind.

“Will,” she had called to him once when he was on the phone with Lucas. He turned to her from where he was standing in the kitchen. “Ask Lucas what song he likes on the radio.”

He smiled and repeated the question.

“He likes Queen.”

She had processed that and nodded, jotting it down on her notebook where she kept up with what was happening with their friends.

They tried to call when they could, but Joyce needed the phone for work, so most of the time they just stuck with letters, but sometimes she wanted to just know little bits about them now.

Max didn’t call a lot. She said she moved, that her mother didn’t make a lot of money so she could afford many long-distance calls. They talked but they didn’t talk very much. Lucas told her that Max was having a hard time, that she wasn’t talking to anyone, not even them.

She worked on her homework at the kitchen table and she could hear Dustin enthusiastically exclaiming to Will.

“There’s this DnD club at school,” he had said, excited, “and the dungeon master is Eddie Munson, that guy is insane. The campaign is great. I told him all about your character and he thinks he sounds awesome.”

“He sounds cool,” Will had said, “I wish I could meet him.”

“Dude, he’d love to meet you. He said if you ever come into town we could do a short campaign.” Will smiled a little at that.

“Really?”

“Yeah, of course!”

So El had been trying hard the past several months. She knew she would not be “normal,” but she was growing and she wanted to show Mike that.

He was excited for her as they skated around the rink together, trying not to fall over. He did not have such snooty taste in music like Will and Jonathan did, and it turned out they liked the same singers sometimes.

It all went great until Angela skidded to a stop in front of her. She had stopped by their table earlier and El had pretended they were friends, insides getting queasy at the lie, and guilt seeped in when Will gave her a knowing look.

Mike almost tripped at the sudden stop, rolling further down the rink.

“You think that we are friends?” Angela said, her voice mean and then they were all pointing and laughing at her and she felt something cold hit her as Angela’s entire drink splashed on her.

She felt wet and angry and she wished she had her powers to push her back away from her, but she couldn’t. Instead she felt the surge of nausea when she tried, which just left her feeling sick like it had every time she tried to use her powers since Starcourt.

But Angela and her friends were still laughing so El didn’t think before she took a roller-skate and smashed it into Angela’s stupid face.

🕑

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Chief Calvin Powell

Chief Powell took in the scene before him with a grim look. Deputy Callahan had been beside him before he had had to duck out of the trailer to throw up over the back steps. If he was being honest with himself, he had been tempted to, too.

Chrissy Cunningham, head cheerleader, last seen leading the final cheers last night, was dead in the Munson’s living room.

Her body was twisted into a grotesque shape, eyes gouged and red with blood. Wayne Munson had called it in when he had come back home that morning to find his nephew curled up on the floor in shock and a dead cheerleader on his floor.

Wayne Munson had been working all night, which was easily verified by the factory and the bags under his eyes.

“I didn’t touch her” Wayne Munson said, arms crossed. “And I know it looks bad, but Eddie didn’t do anything either.”

Chief Powell’s eyes trailed over to the Munson kid. He had hardly any blood on him, aside for his hand. Which he guessed explained the smeared blood at Chrissy’s pulse point. His eyes kept flicking back up the ceiling and Chief Powell couldn’t help but see the way it looked wrong, like it was covered in rot, familiar, but he couldn’t put his finger on why.

He didn’t want to be doing this, didn’t want to be dealing with this, but Hawkins had had  the worst of luck the past few years.

“Edward Munson, you’re under arrest for suspicion of murder.”

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Joyce Byers

It had been harder than she had thought to sneak past her kids to pick up Murray at the airport. She had asked Jonathan to pick Mike up and then she had hightailed it for the next town over, where Murray was flying in.

She couldn’t say she missed the man, because she didn’t, but it was a relief to see him all the same.

He had a duffle bag and a hard-back suitcase with him.

“You know you could have flown into Lenora,” she said as he piled into her car.

“I was not about to fly several hours in some cramped plane with some little brat kicking my seat,” he huffed. “Besides, I had to leave out of Indy.”

“Why?”

“The government tracks us,” he said vaguely, and she couldn’t really dispute him.

She drove back to the house and was unsurprised to see that Jonathan and Argyle still weren’t back. They likely would be hanging out until it was time to pick everyone up from the roller rink.

It was a relief, to be honest, to have to keep from explaining how a slip of paper had caused such a frenzy that Murray had flown across the country for it.

“So, where’s this pen,” he asked and she was about to answer when the front door opened, Jonathan and Argle staring at them.

“Mom? What’s Murray doing here?”

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Mike’s face was shellshocked as he watched Angela fall back. He wasn’t even mad about it- Angela deserved it, what with how she talked so snide and mocking- but it had surprised him. This whole morning had been one thing after the other.

Angela’s friends rushed over to her and Will was pulling El back. Mike reached over the cameraman’s shoulder and ejected the tape. He barely even protested- probably hadn’t even noticed, what with Angela wailing in the middle of the dining area of the skating rink. Mike watched her with disdain. He wasn’t impressed with her whining. He’d have thought she’d tried to keep her composure more, what with how much of a self-important jerk she had made herself out to be.

Someone looked at him and shot him a dirty look. He looked back at them and rolled his eyes. It was whatever. He didn’t care if they could tell he want falling for her crocodile tears and dramatics. He was sure it hurt, though, and that was the only allowance he would give her.

He turned and scoped the place until he found his friends, halfway to the door already.

Will was sneaking El out of the place and Mike swooped up behind them, just narrowly making it through the door before it shut behind him, abruptly cutting off the noise inside.

El sat down on the curb while Will left to find the payphone to call Jonathan to pick them up

“El, are you okay?” he asked, squatting down in front of her putting his hands on her arms. This whole thing was confusing. She had obviously lied because friends don’t hit each other in the middle of a skating rink.

“You’re mad at me because I lied,” she said and he was, if he thought about, but not really, not when he looked at Angela and saw Troy.

He shook his head, “No,” he said.

“You have that look on your face like you’re upset with me.”

“No, I’m just upset in general.” He sighed. “It’s just, why didn’t you tell me? I know what it’s like. You could have.”

“I wanted you to think I had friends. That Angela was my friend. That I am doing well at being normal.”

“Fuck normal. And Angela’s a bitch,” he said with venom and he saw the smallest smile on her face. “And honestly, Angela deserved it. But I know were not supposed to like resort to violence or whatever but-” he shrugged.

She laughed a little under her breath

“You both okay over here?” Will asked and his face was very worried.

“Mike said that he thinks that Angela deserved it.”

“She did,” Will said vehemently and Mike startled because he had never heard Will sound like that, so angry.

El nodded.

“Mom will be here soon, Will said, “and Jonathan and Argyle will pick up some pizza-”

A shrill siren cut him off and Mike watched in horror as police exited the car and the rink owner pointed in El’s direction.

They came over and grabbed her by the wrists.

“Hey, you can’t do that!” Will was saying.

“We’re taking her to the station. Have her parents come by,” they said simply and then they were shoving her in the back of the car.

Mike turned on him.

“What the hell Will?” he demanded

“What? You think I can stop a police officer?” I didn’t put her in jail.”

“You never told me El was being bullied like that.”

“I didn’t know she was keeping that from you until today. And when would I have told you? It’s not like we were talking much.”

Mike bristled. “Conversation is a two-way street Will.”

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

El Hopper

El felt this devastating, gaping feeling inside of her, sitting in that cell. They put her in one all alone, and it wasn’t like the lab- the bars were open and there were other cells beside her so she wasn’t completely enclosed and locked in, but there was no one else in the room.

It felt like an eternity that she was in that cell, before the officers took her out and she saw Joyce there with Murray.

Murray walked off to the side while Joyce came and crouched in front of her.

“Are you okay honey?”

She hesitated and shrugged. “I’m okay.”

“Gosh you sound like Will,” she said and her voice was fond but also sad. Joyce combed her hair out of her face. “It’s okay to be scared if you are.”

“Are you mad? I hit her in the face.” She was waiting for the punishment, to be told she had to go to her room, that she couldn’t leave like at the lab, or for Joyce to yell like Hopper did before he realized he shouldn’t and apologized later.

But Joyce didn’t yell at her, she never had.

Joyce pursed her lips. “First of all, I’m not mad. I think there could have been other ways to handle the situation, of course, but I know that you wouldn’t have done it unless you felt there was no other option.”

“I felt like I was mad and I wanted her to stop. I wanted to use my powers and throw her into a wall, but I couldn’t and that made me more mad.”

“Anger is a good thing El. It’s that little voice inside you telling you something is not okay. But you can’t allow that feeling to rule over you. I know at the lab they pushed you until that was the only thing that you could do to leave the situation. You were justified to do that. You know what that word means?”

El nodded.

Joyce nodded. “You were right to be angry and you were right to leave like you did. But not everything needs the same sort of response. Brenner and all them taught you that you were alone, and Hop, for all the wonderful things about him, sometimes had a hard time asking people for help.”

“Sometimes he would be a little grumpy.”

“Yes,” Joyce said with a little smile. “Sometimes he could be grumpy, especially before his coffee. But you don’t need to hide your problems and be brave to protect us. You’re not alone anymore. If you’re in trouble, if you need anything, you reach out to me and we’ll handle it together.”

“At school Angela tripped me,” she admitted. “I didn’t say anything but the teacher still knew it was her and got her in trouble and Angela was so mad, she did what she did today.”

“Do you think she would stop, if you saw her on Monday?”

El shook her head. “The other boys,” she started, “the ones that bullied Mike- they stopped when I used my powers.”

“They were bullying for power. They like to make other people feel small and when they can’t they move on. People like Angela bully other people for the same reason. People like Angela are looking for an excuse to be mean. Some people stop when you tell them too, Angela is not one of them. Maybe that’ll change when she gets older, or maybe she won’t.”

El sniffed a little bit.

“But you can’t allow that anger to destroy you. It will eat you up and turn you into someone you don’t want to be.”

“I feel like I’m a monster,” she whispered. “A freak. Everyone says it. And I am. I have done many bad things and I am… weird.”

Joyce shook her head. “When someone is a monster, it’s not when they can do bad things, because everybody has the ability to do bad things, El, to hurt people if they want to. A monstrous person is someone who chooses to hurt people on purpose, because hurting them makes them feel good, because they don’t care about the other person at all.

“I’m always here for you El, always. And if something like this happens, if someone is being mean to you, I want you to talk to me, okay, and well solve the problem together. You’re not alone anymore. You’ve got me and Will and Jonathan and we’re your family. And you’ve got your friends, too. I’m sure Max would tell you what to tell those girls to tell them what’s-what.”

El laughed. “She would not let them get away with all that bullshit,” She made a yucky snort sound and she laughed a little bit. She leaned forward and hugged her. Joyce held her tight, stroking her hair.

“I love you El. You don’t always have to save us, you know. You can let us help you too.”

She cried a little bit because she felt like she had to be a superhero all the time. Mike and Will and Jonathan and her other friends told her that the cared about her without powers and she knew that they weren’t lying, but it still felt like she was a big disappointment because she didn’t have them anymore. Every minute back at the lab, all they had talked about was what she could do and then when she left, she needed them to stay safe, it was how she made friends. So to lose them felt like losing an arm.

But now she believed it. Because Joyce loved her no matter what. She knew about El’s powers, El’s powers had been what helped save Will, but Joyce didn’t think she was a worthy person because of them.

“I love you no matter what. Just next time, talk to me before you give another girl a concussion.”

“Okay,” she said. “I will do that.”

“Let’s get you out of this and then we’ll go home,”

She laughed wetly and Joyce took her out of there.

🕑

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Chief Calvin Powell

“I swear I’m innocent,” Eddie insisted, hands waving around in his cuffs.

“Yeah, yeah,” the Chief Powell said as he shut the door of the holding cell and headed back out to the bullpen.

He walked back to his desk and dropped his head in his hands.

“You okay?” Deputy Callahan asked and the Powell knew he was thinking the same thing. “Theres no way it was this Munson kid, is there?” Callahan continued, but it wasn’t a question “But we have to keep him here.”

“We don’t know it’s not him,” he said, because he had to, but they both knew it wasn’t him.

They had seen the state Chrissy was in when they found her body, and for all Munson’s heavy metal and general delinquency, there was nothing to indicate he would do that. He had run, sure, but unless this kid was the best actor in the state of Indiana, he had nothing to do with it. But by the look on his face, he had seen who had done it.

Or what. the traitorous part of his mind whispered, but he couldn’t quite dismiss it. He had never seen anything, but too many strange things had happened in Hawkins over the past three years, things he and Callahan hadn’t quite seen, things he was sure Hopper had kept secret.

“There’s something weird about this town. You know that as well as I do.”

“Hop definitely knew more than he ever told us.” Callahan shook his head. “That man was too damn stubborn.”

This whole thing sucked. There was no other way to say it. He had been working for the promotion, but he never wanted to get it because his friend was dead. The grief had sent his head spinning, and when he finally felt some semblance of stability,  he stepped into the job only to feel off-kilter again. He couldn’t help but feel like he had stepped into the middle of some story, the whole beginning lost to time. Because Hop may have been a good Sherriff, but he was shit at keeping notes of anything.

“We need to go to Hop’s cabin.”

“You know he wasn’t the sit down and write-it-out kinda guy. He was always more of a do person.”

Powell shook his head. “The only one he might have told was Joyce and she’s all the way in Cali now.”

“Never thought there’d be a day where we’d miss Joyce Byers.”

“She may have been crazy but she was a good person.”

The deputy sobered and nodded.

The sheriff shook his head. “Let’s just work this case.”

🕑

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Lucas Sinclair

Lucas woke up in a haze.

The other basketball guys were all passed out around him, and he was glad he hadn’t drunk that much.

He saw Patrick stir beside him and his bows knitted together in concern when he saw him.

Patrick had always been friendly to him despite the fact that Lucas was a freshman. Now he had this distant look on his face

Lucas looked at Patrick. “Hey man, are you okay?”

He just nodded. “I’m fine.”

Lucas watched him, worried, before he caught sight of the time.

Shit, his parents were going to be waiting for him

🕑

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Karen Wheeler

Karen Wheeler was exhausted.

She had woken up at five this morning to drag Mike out of bed and take him to the airport and then she had to get the rest of the family ready.

The Sinclairs had stopped by, Sue fretting about Lucas.

“It’s not that I don’t trust him,” she said, “Lucas is a good boy, but it’s that Jason kid,” she shook her head.

Charles nodded.  “He reminds me of that Troy fellow.”

Karen shook her head. Troy and his friends had been the bane of their existence for years, constantly terrorizing their kids and the school doing absolutely nothing.

She had seen the Jason kid around town and while he was outwardly polite, she could sense the trouble radiating off of him.

“It’s like you said, Lucas is a good kid.”

“I know,” Sue said. “I guess I just get worried. I saw the news, some kid went to a party and drowned in the swimming pool because he was drunk, just awful stuff. And we’ve never had to worry about that…”

Because their kids were always playing their boardgames in the basement.

“And then there was what happened with Barbara Holland,” Charles said solemnly.

And Will, none of them said, but they were all thinking that too.

Will knew Hawkins, and though they said that he got lost, she knew she, the Sinclairs, and Claudia didn’t believe it, but they didn’t have an explanation.

She heard feet on the stairs and saw Nancy come down.

“Good morning,” she said, “Morning Mr. and Mrs. Sinclair.”

“Good morning, Nancy,” Sue said brightly. “Now why are you up so bright and early on a Saturday?”

“I’ve got to finish up some of the last of the spread for the paper. I want it ready to be distributed Monday morning when school’s back.” She gave them a grin. “I’ll be sure to save you a copy. Lucas will be getting the front page for sure, especially with that shot.”

The Sinclairs beamed.

“Oh, I wish I had brought my camera,” Charles said wistfully.

“I’ll see if Fred got a copy of it.”

“Thank you.”

“No prob-”

She was cut off by a knock at the door.

Karen frowned. She wasn’t expecting any visitors, especially not with Mike gone and Jonathan in California.

She walked over to the door and opened it, stepping back when she saw the officers.

“Chief Powell!” She said. “What brings you here.”

He shifted uncomfortably, glancing from her to the Sinclairs to Nancy.

“Do any of you know how to get ahold of Joyce Byers?”

Karen blinked in surprise.

“Didn’t all your kids basically live in her house?” he continued.

“They did. But that was because of Will,” Karen said. She shifted uncomfortably, not really willing to admit that she didn’t keep in touch because Joyce wasn’t their friend.

Joyce was nice enough, genuine. But what good was genuine if you were an outcast? Joyce had never been especially good at playing along with being normal, and that, Karen could only admit to herself with the utmost shame, was not something she was willing to associate with, not where anyone else could see.

“Why? Are the kids in trouble?” Sue asked, face twisting with worry. “Lucas has their new number, I’m sure.”

“No, no, ma’am,” Chief Powell reassured. “We just wanted to ask Joyce if Hopper told her anything about something.”

“Cheif Powell,” Karen found herself saying, unsure how she was so emboldened to speak, “If something’s wrong, you’d tell us, right?”

He shifted from foot to foot, and Karen felt a heavy stone of worry settle in her gut.

“One of the cheerleaders from last night was found dead,” he said and the room fell silent

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Will Byers

Will leaned back against the walls of the pizza van. Mike and Argyle had gone in to grab some food while he and Jonathan sat, but the silence felt unbearable, Will’s guilt eating away at him.

“Are you okay Will?” Jonathan asked softly.

He wanted to deny it, but this was about more than him.

“I didn’t do anything, Jonathan,” He confessed. “I saw Angela was mad and I didn’t step in. I was a coward.”

“Hey, I’m sure El doesn’t think that.”

“I was just scared,” Will said, curling in on himself. “I don’t think I can do anything right.”

“Hey,” Jonathan said, trying to take the alarm out of his voice.

“Jonathan,” Will said, his voice almost pleading, drenched in resignation and a tinge of bitterness. “All I ever do is cause bad thing to happen. Dad hates me, and then I went missing, I caused Mom and you so much trouble. All I ever do is make everybody’s lives worse. And the we got to start over but when El needed me I was too chickenshit to help her-”

“And what were you supposed to do, beat Angela up?”

“No, but I could have told them to stop.”

“Have you talked to El about this. Does she blame you?”

“She should.”

“Ask her. And Will, you’re not whatever you’re telling yourself you are, alright? Dad’s a dick. He was a jerk to Mom so his opinion is shit, okay?

“And everybody- mom, me, your friends, we were upset about you going missing because they care about you and didn’t want to lose you, not because they were annoyed with you because you made everything complicated. Does it seem like they resent El for all of that?”

“No, but-”

“They love you Will they didn’t want you to die,” Jonathan said firmly

Will curled further in on himself, burying his face in his knees, so he wouldn’t have to see how Jonathna opened his mouth as if to say more, only no words came.

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Joyce Byers

El was crying and Joyce was furious.

They had been ushered out of the jail cells and into a room with double sided windows to discuss the assult.

“You are not bringing my daughter into custody,” she said. “There was video evidence of the inciting incident, am I correct?”

The cops blubbered a whole lot of nothing but she wasn’t ready to listen until they gave her a complete sentence to work with.

“I’m sure my lawyer,” she gestured to Murray emphatically, like if she did it with enough fervor then maybe they would believe that he really was a lawyer, “would love to take a look at it. Make sure that it really is as your daughter said- a completely unprovoked attack.”

The girl shrank back under the truth and her parents looked downright mortified.

The mother and father exchanged a long look above their daughter’s head and Joyce could practically see the mental volley between the two. “We’ll drop the charges.”

“Good,” she said stiffly. She waved the cops over and they made quick work of taking the handcuffs off El. She gave a short nod to the parents and then she was ushering El out of the building, Murray following closely behind, giving the parents the stink eye she wanted to give.

As soon as they made it out of the stuffy, loud police station, she picked up the pace to the car and they all quickly piled in as she hightailed it back to the house

This whole thing was a mistake, moving to Lenora was a mistake. And it was time it ended

She barged into the house, the door slamming back against the wall in her haste. “We’re moving back to Hawkins. Any objections?”

Argyle looked up. “I mean, my mom might be a little upset with me leaving, but I’m down Ms. B.”

She laughed a little and it sounded a bit hysterical, but Will was just staring at her wide-eyed. And she looked back at El. She took a deep breath. “This was a lot of change all at once. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea-”

El surged forward and gave her a hug.  “Can we really leave Joyce?”

She nodded, wrapping her arms around her. Will came forward and hugged her. She had to look over his head at their other guest- when had Will gotten so big? “Sorry Mike. I know that this isn’t exactly how you planned to spend your spring break.”

He shrugged. “It’s fine, I’m sure my parents will be happy about not having to pay for a return ticket.”

🕑

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

Nancy was out the door without much hesitation, her mother and the Sinclairs still reeling from the new the Chief had just given them, but her brain was already moving.

Something strange had happened. The Chief wouldn’t saw what, but she knew there was something he wasn’t saying, something odd enough that he wanted to consult Hopper. Also, she doubted any death could happen in Hawkins that wasn’t tainted by the Upside Down.

She drove to the school, where Fred was already waiting, anxious to begin for the day.

“Did you hear about Chrissy?” she asked, apropos of nothing.

Fred blinked in confusion. “Cunningham? No.”

“She’s dead. She was found dead at Eddie Munson’s,” she said bluntly. “I want to go to the trailer park to see if there are any leads. Do you want to come?”

He blinked almost owlishly.

“Okay,” he said with a nod, much more sure-looking than she thought she had ever seen from him.

She nodded and led the way to her car.

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Joyce Byers

Joyce had only had two major moves in her life, the first when she got married and the other had been about nine months ago. It was something that was tedious and time-consuming, the heart-wrenching circumstances no doubt making it take even longer.

This time was nothing like that. Even with that experience under her belt, she never would have expected for them to pack up this quickly.

Jonathan and Argyle went out to get some boxes and a U-Haul and the kids had gone straight to their rooms and ripped the sheets off their beds, folding with more gusto than she had ever been able to muster out of them when she did the laundry. There wasn’t much in the garage besides a tool box and their bikes so they left that in there, aside for a screwdriver that was quickly utilized to take the beds apart

She watched them pass in and out of the room while she and Murray wrapped newspaper around their glasses.

“Did I make a mistake?” she asked. She could feel her eyes beginning to burn. “Did I make a mistake dragging us all the way out here to California, away from their friends?”

Something resolute settled on Murray’s face. “I think you were doing what you thought was best. I think that it could have turned out great or horrible. The same thing could have happened if you stayed there and then you would spend all your time wondering if you should have moved,” he said, not quite able to meet her eyes as he gave her an answer that wasn’t cutting with sarcasm. “They’re fine. They’re good kids, and I usually hate kids,” he offered and she had to laugh.

“You have to, you’re their weird uncle or whatever.”

“I will not accept that title.”

She smirked.

“We come bearing boxes Ms. Byers,” Argyle called through the front door.

“Thank you. You and Jonathan can set them up in the living room.”

“While this whole moving thing is, you know, very moving,” Murray lowered his voice, “what are we going to do about the whole pen situation?”

“Oh shit,” she hissed.

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Mike Wheeler

The Byers house became a flurry of activity packing it up.

It was nothing like the long, drawn out move from last summer- this was fast and efficient. Jonathan and Argyle had gone to pick up some boxes, and after that it was a whirlwind, almost as if they were afraid the police would change their mind and come back to bring El in.

The Byers hadn’t unpacked everything from the original move, so those boxes were dragged into the living room

He and Argyle were tasked with setting up all the new boxes, but they were gone almost as soon as they were made. Everything the Byers had was picked up and all but dumped into box after box.

He finished the last one and then allowed himself to wander, trying to see if he could help anywhere. He helped Joyce grab some things that were too high, he stripped Jonathan’s bed and said nothing of the little bags of pot Jonathan was trying to hide away.

He didn’t say anything to Will, just stood awkwardly in the doorway while Will carefully packed his art supplies into a rag-lined shoebox.

“Mike,” Joyce called and he turned from Will’s room to jog over to her.

“Yeah Ms. Byers?”

“I have a job for you, if you want it.”

He nodded, eager to do something, instead of just wandering around aimlessly.

“Good, good,” she nodded absently, mind already starting to move on, he had seen it so many times before. “There’s food in the kitchen. Pack up anything nonperishable and everything else, can you make sandwiches with the rest. Any leftovers we can just eat before we head out.

He nodded.

He got to work making lunches, methodically wearing through the ingredients until there was nothing left. He packed away what he could and let himself drift until he found himself drifting over to El’s room.

She looked nothing like the happy sunny California girl she had been when they met at the airport hours ago, the epitome of everything Max claimed California would be.

“Why didn’t Will protect you?” he said, already hating how demanding, how grating the question was, as if El wasn’t sitting there on her bed with dried tears on her face.

El shrank back. “I was too scared to ask.” She hesitated, biting her lips. “I know Will was… bullied. Before. I didn’t want him to be here too.”

Mike shook his head, but he felt a hard lump in his throat. “The things people said, they wouldn’t say that here.”

“Why?”

“They just wouldn’t make the same assumptions.”

“What assumptions did they make in Hawkins?”

“It’s just mean words.”

She gave him a look. “What words?”

“They would say stuff like,” he exhaled, not really looking at her, not really able to say it out loud. “They would say shit like he’s gay or whatever.”

“What is gay?”

“It means a boy who likes boys. Like-likes. Or a girl who likes girls.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“People don’t like it. They say it’s not right. Weird. People say there’s something wrong with them, some even say they’re delusional, that the feelings aren’t real”

“But it is normal. There is a definition for it, which means it is real.”

“Some people use that definition to hate people even more.”

El was quiet a long moment. “Is he? Is Will gay?”

Mike didn’t say anything. He knew what people said about Will, but the older they got, the more that that train of thought was off limits, it was just somewhere he never allowed himself to go, and he didn’t know why.

“It wouldn’t matter if he was,” Mike said finally. “If they decide you are they will torment you regardless.”

She nodded with a solemn look on her face.

Help me pack he said and he did gladly, happy to have distance from the conversation

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

El Hopper

She saw Will in the hall.

Everyone was out at the car, trying to fit the boxes together. She and Will were the only ones left, doing a last look-though of all the drawers and cabinets to make sure they didn’t forget anything.

“Will?”

“Yes?”

“Are you afraid of bullies because you were scared they are going to say that you are gay?”

Will froze.

“Mike told me what gay means,” El expanded. “It is boys who likes boys.”

“That’s a nice way to say it. They mean it like freak. People don’t like people who are different.”

She nodded. “I know.”

He shrank. “I’m sorry, El. I didn’t do anything when they were bullying you.”

“It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not El. I know how bad it can be and I just stood there. So many times. They weren’t even saying stuff about me here. I should have been brave.”

“But you were my friend. You couldn’t make Angela stop, even if you wanted to.” She leaned into him. “Why are people such mouth breathers?”

“They don’t like people who are different. They don’t want to see anything in themselves that is different so they punish people who stand out. Sometimes really bad. Billy tried to kill Lucas because he was black. I wish- I wish things could just be different sometimes,” he said, sadness bleeding into his words. “I just wish things were different.”

El frowned her face bent into a look of concentration. “I think we can make things different, if we try.”

“Maybe,” he said after a moment. “I hope you’re right.”

🕑

Lenora, California, 1986

Joyce Byers

They all climbed into the van. She was tapping her fingers on the wheel erratically and she knew it wouldn’t be long before one of her kids noticed that something was up. Jonathan was already starting to look over at her.

“So hey,” she started, forcing casual, but her voice came out strangled and on edge, “you all might have noticed that Murray came here! To visit us all the way from Indiana.”

“And make a mean risotto. Which, maybe later.” Murray tacked on cheerfully.

“And apparently he’s completely fine with ending it just as abruptly by choosing to drive with us all the way back to Indiana,” Mike said, frowning.

“Well, uh, about that,” Joyce laughed a little to set them all at ease. It was not working- at all. “I received an, uh, interesting piece of mail in the…mail.”

“What was it?” Johnthan asked, rousing to alertness.

“A pen.”

“A pen,” Will’s voice was dripping with skepticism.

“What is so special about this pen,” El asked.

“We found a number- an address.”

“Like a street address?” Argyle asked.

“More like a latitude and longitude address.”

Mike’s eyebrows shot up and Will, Jonathan, and El were gaping.

“So, uh, Murray here, just… ran it through his little computer and it just popped out the address, and what do you know! It’s now on our way!”

“Were you planning to go on a road trip with Murray?” El frowned, processing the whole thing.

“Well, we were thinking of it. We really hadn’t thought much yet-”

“Where is it?” Jonathan asked, gripping his hands on the back of her headrest to lean into the conversation.

“Nevada…”

“Nevada!” Will burst out. And the whole backseat exploded in chaos.

She waited to allow them time to cool down, to allow her to cool down. She wasn’t good with giving this kind of news. She always felt that all the other girls took a special class on tactfulness when they were kids or something, because she had a way of just blurting things out. Though she had had a rough go of news to tell- first interdimensional kidnapping to government conspiracies. Maybe there was no good way to say that. The thought made her feel a bit better.

Joyce kept her hope that Hopper was alive between her and Murray. She didn’t want to get the kids- El’s- hopes up. But the kids didn’t really seem to care all that much about why they were going to the middle of the desert, so long as they were leaving California.

She took a deep breath. “Yeah so, we were going to go, but we won’t if you-”

“Wait, who was the pen from?” Mike asked and the backseat fell silent.

“Dr. Owens.”

Will furrowed his brow. “Dr. Owens sent it to you?”

“Or someone else sent it to me, yeah.”

“We can go,” El said. “I mean, I do not mind.”

Will shrugged, settling back in his seat. “How much worse could it be than where we’ve already been?”

She glanced up at her mirror. “Mike, John, Argyle?”

“I’m all in Ms. B. I always wanted to go to Nevada.”

Jonathan nodded. “If you feel like we should go, then I think we should go, Mom. You haven’t been wrong before.”

She snorted, a bit waterier than she would have liked. “That hasn’t led us to the best situations.”

“Most of the time we were already in them.”

Mike nodded, already eager. “I’m in. My parent’s aren’t even expecting me back for a week.”

“Your parents. Okay,” she said, slapping her hands on the wheel and gripping it tight as she twisted the key in the ignition and the engine roared back to life. “Okay,” she nodded. “Don’t tell your mother I took you off to some mysterious location in the middle of the desert.”

“Deal.”

🕑

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

Nancy, felt a pang of worry strike her stomach. She didn’t know where Fred could have gone. She hadn’t even wanted him to say for long- the whole thing reeked of something suspicious, but she hadn’t been able to shake him all year- not that she really minded most of the time. He could be withdrawn, but he was a generally good kid and very interested in journalism- not just in publishing something, but getting to the hard truth.

He wasn’t in the car- she had told him to stay in the car, but when had anyone ever listen to that rule?

Realistically, he probably was just off trying to interview a few more neighbors- when else would they have a chance to talk to all of them again so soon after the accident and or get past the lines the cops were drawing up around this place? She knew they could always track the neighbors down around town, but people usually didn’t respond that well to that and they were usually more cagey. This was more gossip whispered through screen doors, spied outside windows by nosy neighbors.

Almost all of them thought Eddie had killed her.

“He plays that metal music,” his neighbor had sniffed derisively. “And everyone knows that’s the ruckus of hell.” Her sister, who was sitting out in front of the trailer with her, nodded in agreement.

“And he wears that shirt with a demon or the devil himself on it, and I just know he’s consorting with the devil. Lord only knows why he took it out on that sweet girl, though.”

“Sacrifice,” Beaty said and her sister nodded sagely. “You only put the pure lamb up for slaughter, after all. There’s been an uptick in all that demon stuff, young lady,” she said nodding at Nancy. “I’m sure you’ve heard the stories.”

“I’ll be sure to check out all avenues,” she assured them. “I want to do right by Chrissy.”

She wasn’t sure about the music thing, but she was pretty sure that wasn’t a sign of whether someone was going to murder someone, but she knew that shirt- Mike had been wearing it yesterday.

Eddie Munson’s reputation was well known throughout the school. He was an outcast, but instead of being bogged down by it, he embraced it whole-heartly. If he wasn’t locked up right now and there wasn’t an on-going murder investigation, she would have loved to interview him on that, about what it took to stand out when everyone else was telling you to retreat back.

She wasn’t entirely sure Eddie did it. He was loud and dramatic, but he hadn’t even gotten into any fights. Even Steve, golden boy Steve, had gotten in fights, though those were all off campus. But Munson kept to himself.

There was nothing to indicate any violence with him, but she long since learned to look past what she assumed.

There was the question about why Chrissy was at Eddie’s place. The answer was both obvious and unbelievable at the same time. Chrissy was mild and meek, so some sort of affair didn’t make sense, which only left drugs. Which begged the question of why?

But there was something akin to foreboding coiling inside her when she thought of the murder.

All that was officially released was that someone had died, but it wasn’t leaked whether it had been an accident or murder, but based off of Hawkins’ running deathrate, she was going to guess murder or a freak accident that was really just murder done by interdimensional monsters.

But El had sealed off the remainder of the Upside Down last summer with Billy. They hadn’t heard anything else, but that didn’t mean anything either. El had closed the portal the year before that too and still Billy got possessed and took down the biggest body count to date. Attacks by the Upside Down were marked by periods of dormancy, usually about a year, and it was coming up on that time now.

But when the door to the Munson’s trailer opened, she had managed to catch the briefest glimpse at Chrissy’s body. She knew her- not well, but she knew her all the same. They had done some pieces on the basketball team and the cheerleading squad was usually pulled for quotes since they went to all the games. Some of the girls were a bit bitchy, very much like Carol when she had been there, but Chrissy was always very sweet, so softspoken that Nancy’s tape recorder almost hadn’t picked her up. She didn’t deserve to die like she had.

She stopped right in the middle of the grass lot, her brain connecting everything together.

Chrissy and Eddie had known each other, at least they had a few years ago. She had been in the journalism club in middle school, which was more a newsletter than anything, but she had still thrown herself into it fully. She could tell her teacher was weary of it all, but as the intrepid reporter that she was, she would not allow those years to pass by without acquiring more skills. So, she had been tasked with watching and writing up review of the school play.

She was familiar with Romeo and Juliet, had seen many renditions of it over the years- from the unimpassioned readings in English class, to a play she and her mom seen on a trip to Indianapolis a few years ago- but none of them truly captured the roles like Eddie and Chrissy had.

Eddie injected his role with charm and humor, giving Romeo new life, and Chrissy- reserved, docile Chrissy- had given just as good with sweet innocence and charm that made it so Nancy couldn’t look away. And then afterwards it was like it had never happened. Eddie had gone off to high school and by the time they joined him, he was even more of an outcast than he was before.

But Chrissy’s body had been contorted grotesquely and for whatever reason caused them to stop talking to each other it wouldn’t have resulted in this- this kind of murder.

The panic that had been on a distant shore was starting to brush closer.

She needed to find Fred. They had more than enough information and now they needed to leave. They needed to get out of here. She needed to tell someone, but she was wasn’t sure who. Usually, she brought all of this stuff to Jonathan and then they would find out that Joyce’s supernatural sense had kicked in too and that somehow her little brother and his friends would also be involved. But Jonathan, Ms. Byers, and Mike were all gone.

But more important than that Fred was gone. He was only fifteen. He was still so young. He shouldn’t have to get involved in all this stuff.

She spent hours looking for him before she came across the barricade of police cars.

They found him three miles away- they figured he had walked all the at there an then he had been found dead by a driver who almost hit him- would have if it had been any darker.

His body was mangled and it looked like his eyes had been gouged out of his face

She felt a pang of guilt, more like an overflowing, drowning wave of it.

🕑

???, California, 1986

Will Byers

They were all holed up in a tiny motel room sharing the space. It was cramped with the three beds, if he included the pullout couch, and there was a stove. The place wasn’t very clean, but it would do, given the circumstances.

His mom and Murray had gotten an adjoining room, but right now the door was open, leaving them to pass freely between them.

Argyle and Murray were out by the car, smoking, as they had been for a while. Murray had left out his computer thing for El to look at to practice her powers. Mike was laying down trying and failing to fall asleep.

His mom was in their room, trying to make some dinner with some of the food they had in the cooler they brought with them while Jonathan was pressed in the corner of the room at the table with the phone.

Will watched Jonathan as he dialed the Wheeler’s number. He seemed nervous, but everything was kind of weird right now, so that wasn’t all that unusual.

Jonathan waited as the phone dialed through, leg jostling against card table shoved in the corner of the room. He had left to get high a couple hours ago, so he was likely coming down now.

He straightened, hand gripping tighter on the receiver. “Hey Nancy, hi. I- yeah, we’re fine. Yeah, I know. It’s kind of a long story,” he said shifting to his other leg anxiously. Will studied it all. Another pause. “We’re leaving California. We’re coming back to Hawkins.” Another pause. This one longer. His face got paler and his knuckles were turning white.

“Mom?” he said. Mom looked up from her eggs and over to him. “Nancy needs to talk to you.”

She nodded, wiping off her hands, before she took the phone.

“Hi Nancy. Are you okay? Hon what time is it over there? Jonathan was saying you needed to ask me something.” Another long pause before her face blanched, and Will felt a sickening twist in his stomach. He could feel Mike’s eyes on him, but he couldn’t turn around to see him watching. Mike had always bene too good at seeing him, but he didn’t want him to, not if the unsettled feeling he had had to closer and closer they got to Indiana was any indication.

His mom looked over at them and then ducked into the bathroom and closed the door as much as the phone cord would allow

Jonathan sat down at the table fingers entwined together tightly.

“Something killing people at Hawkins,” Jonathan said quietly.

“What!” Will blurt out, just as Mike’s voice chimed in behind him. “When?”

“She was saying it happened Friday night.”

Mike went stark still. “I was in Hawkins on Friday. How didn’t I-.”

“I know,” he sighed. “News didn’t break until Saturday morning. She said the murders were grizzly and she said that Eddie Munson, I guess, saw the first one and it was completely unnatural.”

The name was vaguely familiar to Will, but it wasn’t until Mike’s face switched into one of devastation that Will remembered who he was. The new DM.

“Eddie’s involved?” Mike asked.

“Yeah, at least, he is now. They’re saying he had Chrissy over at his house or something and she died.”

“We have to go help them.”

“We need to get back to Hawkins,” El said resolutely. Will hadn’t noticed when she had started listening.

Joyce came back out, looking harried. She went outside a moment and then came back, Argyle and Murray in tow.

“Did you tell them?”

Jonathan nodded.

“How far away is Hawkins?” El asked.

Will was already looking at the map. “Still over a day, and that’s if we don’t stop.”

“But what about Nevada?”

“I don’t know,” Mom said “We we’re just going to swing by but I have this feeling that we need to go there or we’re going to miss something big. I know it doesn’t make sense but I feel it in my gut.”

“We should go,” El said. “You have good… instincts. It is on the way, yes?”

“Maybe an hour off, but we can stop by there really quick and then we can be on our way.”

“Then let’s go, first thing tomorrow.”

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Chief Calvin Powell

They didn’t find him until the late hours of Saturday night but the scene was as harrowing as the first.

Young Fred laid on the ground as mangled as Chrissy had been, the sight enough to twist Chief Powell’s stomach just as violently, even now, hours after they first found them.

Their medical examiner was at a loss for words, which was saying something since he had been in charge of marking the scene after the Starcourt explosion, but he supposed this was different.

The night bled into early morning, and in the grey dawn he could see the scorched-looking marks on the ground where Fred’s body had laid before it had been wrapped up and brought to the morgue. Identical markings to the ones on the Munson’s ceiling, meaning it had been the same killer both times

It was a grim way to start the morning, even grimmer now that their only lead, as flimsy as it was, was no longer viable.

🕒

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Eddie Munson

Eddie woke up to the sound of the cell doors opening.

“You’re free to leave.”

He blinked at the light, pulling himself to his feet. “I’m free?”

There was a deadly serious set to the Chief Powell’s jaw as he nodded, and Eddie felt some sort of sinking feeling about it. He wanted to ask but he wasn’t sure he wanted an answer, assuming the Chief was even able to say anything at all.

He grabbed his stuff from Florence on the way out and stopped in his tracks when he got to the parking lot.

Steve Harrington was there, leaning back against his shiny car, bouffanted hair perfect despite the fact that it couldn’t be later than 8:00 in the morning.

Steve looked up and took one last drag of his cigarette before dropping it to the asphalt and crushing it beneath his shoe. He jerked his head in the direction of his car and Eddie followed wordlessly, not really sure why he even bothering to listen. Maybe it was curiosity, maybe it was distress from the night before, maybe it was the fact that Steve had been on his mind more often than not the past few days.

It wasn’t like Eddie was obsessed with Steve Harrington- he didn’t think he had actually ever spoken with the guy. But it was the kind of interest that came when he saw someone everywhere and he kept coming up in conversations all the time.

Steve was a fairly likable guy- at least on paper. He was popular, but not enough of a bad boy that he wouldn’t help an elderly woman cross the street if he was requested to do such a thing. He wore clothes that had absolutely no personality at all, though his hair was always particularly coiffed, like some sort of movie star from Hollywood, not some teenager in Hawkins, Indiana.

He didn’t know why Steve Harrington of all people had shown up to pick him up from the police station, but he didn’t trust it, nor did he trust when Steve turned on the main road towards an old set of abandoned houses.

Steve parked the car without saying anything and got out. Eddie hesitated before following after him. As soon as Steve turned the corner of the first house, Eddie grabbed one of the old bottles lying around and smashed it and shoved the guy to the wall. Steve may have been more athletic, but Eddie was older by at least a year and now had the element of surprise.

“Eddie, what the hell!” he heard and he quickly glanced to his side to see that there were several people, all of whom had been obscured by the corner of the house.

Steve was sweating against the glass bottle held to his throat, and under the flood of adrenaline that was coursing through his veins, he was kind of glad about it, glad that he could be intimidating in at least one way since everything he had ever known kind of just turned on its head.

Dustin was saying a lot of things that weren’t registering, not until he felt a hand on his wrist, slowly pulling his hand away.

“Steve’s good,” Dustin was saying and Steve was holding his hands up in surrender. Eddie lowered the bottle and Steve slunk out of his grip like a cat. Steve was disheveled but he shook out his shoulders and then it was like it had never happened. Eddie wouldn’t have even been able to tell if it wasn’t for the slightly off-kilter lilt to his usually perfectly manicured hair. Either Eddie wasn’t as intimidating as he just thought he was or- he felt his gut sink to his shoes as all the things Dustin had just been saying  you can trust him, really Eddie you can’t say anything we won’t believe- Steve had been through this before.

He dropped his arm to his side and stared down at the ground. “What the fuck?” he whispered.

“You okay dude?” Dustin asked, genuinely concerned, and Eddie could guess he probably looked like he was going to hurl.

“Dude, I was in the slammer,” Eddie said, eyes wild, demeanor frantic. “Why did they even let me out? They definitely think I did it. Even I would have thought I did it.”

“They did,” Dustin said solemnly, resting a hand on Eddie’s shoulder in a gesture Eddie was sure was meant to be reassuring, but definitely wasn’t.

“Then why did they let me out?” he asked, hysterical. And yeah, he was really showing off why he was in charge of the DnD group. He had the whole theatrics thing going for him. Though, in his defense, it was definitely warranted in this case.

“Look, someone else got murdered not far from where you live,” Nancy carefully explained. “Same MO, same everything. The only difference was that you were in a holding cell.”

“Nancy Wheeler? Dustin, What the fuck is going on? You have the suburb welcoming committee here?”

“Eddie, you need to calm down,” Robin said, because she was here too. Of course she was. Who else was going to show up next? The fucking president?

“Like hell!”

“We know you saw something weird,” Steve said

Eddie scoffed. “That doesn’t even begin to describe it,”

“Then describe it for us,” Nancy said in that steely tone of hers, the one that left no room for arguing, “because were trying to figure it out.”

“You won’t believe me.”

“Try us.”

He was going to rebut her before he looked, actually looked, at all of them and in the refection on the bottle, he saw his skin go ghostly pale as the realization sunk in.

“Chrissy died,” he said. He was tempted to close his eyes, to take a deep breath, to do something to calm down, but he hadn’t been able to close his eyes without seeing Chrissy’s mangled body pinned to his eyelids, just like she had been to his uncle’s ceiling. “It was crazy- almost-”

“Supernatural?” Dustin asked.

He frowned. “Yeah,” he said, truly turning to look at him. Dustin nodded again and once again Eddie’s eyes were drawn to the wider group, how they were all taking this in stride. That feeling he had before solidified as if it had been cast in concrete.

“What- how?”

“You remember us talking about our friend Will? It started after Will went missing,” Dustin said. “That’s when most of us got in on this. Max got in the next year- do you remember how all the pumpkins were dying and the weird creepy hospital got locked down?”

He nodded. It has been weird, something he had heard in passing but hadn’t paid much thought to, though.

“That’s when Max joined. And Robin got in on all this with all the Starcourt stuff.”

“The mall that blew up?” He shook his head, trying to make sense of all of this, but it wasn’t adding up, except, actually, it was… “So all of this is like werewolves and shit. Monsters in the forest?”

“Well, technically they’re monsters from another dimension, but supernatural seems like the easiest way to describe it right now,” Nancy Wheeler said.

“They refused to call it sci-fi-y,” Dustin tacked on.

Eddie was just nodding along. Why the fuck not.

“Whatever killed Chrissy struck again,” Nancy said without preamble. “Whatever it was killed Fred. They found his body this morning/last night. I had been one of the people who was looking for him. So I was one of the first people Chief Powell told. That’s how we knew you were being released. We took statement from your neighborhood, but we need your version of it all, see if we can mark out any sort of pattern.”

“Someone else is dead,” he asked, reeling

“Yeah, Fred from journalism.”

Eddie shook his head. “And what do you mean. I didn’t see anything,” he said.

She paused. “What did you see?”

He hesitated, wanted to deny, but fuck it. “Chrissy was just standing there and then she got thrown up into the air like a rag doll or something. Her eyes were open but she wasn’t really seeing anything, you know? And then all her joints just cracked the wrong way and her eyes caved in and then she just… fell on the ground.”

“And were there markings were Chrissy was?”

He frowned, trying to remember. “Yeah. Dark ones on the ceiling.”

“Like it was burnt?”

“At first, yeah, but then it looked more like rot.”

Nancy took a deep breath. “I can’t say whether or not Fred floated, but he was found looking the same way you described Chrissy. And there was a dark mark left behind.”

🕒

???, Nevada, 1986

El Hopper

The drive to Nevada was long, but they had room in the station wagon for all of them to fit- well, not easily, but they could all fit decently. It helped that Joyce and Murray were driving the U-Haul.

The coordinates had been pretty exact, so as soon as they had crossed into Nevada, Joyce pulled over at the nearest gas station and bought a map of Nevada so Murray could mark it off.

“We could always stop by the casinos, make some money,” Mike said

“You can’t even go into the casinos,” Jonathan said shooting a dirty look at Mike.

“Imagine if we struck it big- you could be rich,” Mike continued, pointedly ignoring the glare.

“What is a casino?” El asked.

“A den of iniquity and men and women willing to gamble their lives away for a high,” Joyce muttered, as she stepped back out of the car to join Murray at the hood. “We are not going, it is a bad…”

“It’s a place with all these machines and you bet which numbers they will land on and if you guess right you could win a ton of money,” Mike explained.

“Most of them are rigged,” Will shrugged. “But if you used your powers on it...”

She grinned widely. “We could be rich.”

Will nodded enthusiastically. “We could play video games or do whatever we wanted.”

We could go to the mall again and get ice cream. El thought. Well, maybe not the mall since the one in Hawkins blew up, but maybe one down in Indianapolis. That would be nice.

Lately thinking of her powers had filled her with a sense of gloom. There was a block in the way of her accessing her powers. She could push at it with her mind, but she couldn’t get at it, almost like she had to try and approach it from a different angle. And she worried that the longer she went without using her powers, the weaker her hold on them would be. Like a muscle in atrophy. The thought of using her powers for a game instead of something… big, though. This was what they called a fantasy. Like the DnD or the comics that Max had. It was nice.

“You could buy a mansion. A big, old house that has like, twenty bathrooms,” Mike said.

She laughed. “Why would someone need twenty bathrooms?”

“I don’t know, but some rich people have them.”

This was good. It wasn’t not like earlier at the skate rink

“Got it,” Murray called out, waving the map. “Back in the car rugrats.”

El scowled at him, but he didn’t seem to care.

Joyce yanked the gas pump out of the car and slotted it back into the dock and went in to the store to pay while they all piled back in and then they were off.

Nevada was very much the same, everywhere. Some places of California had trees and things, but other places had a whole lot of desert.

“I miss trees,” she said. Will hummed in agreement. “Does Las Vegas have trees?”

She looked at Mike who seemed to know a lot about it. “I, uh-”

“Oh yeah, sure, little lady,” Argyle said, easily, offering her a smile. He was odd, but she liked him a lot. “I went there with my uncle two summers ago. They have trees. It’s like a forest, but in the city. But what is the real attraction are the hotels.”

“What makes them so special?”

“They have lights and all over and they have these shows with the fountains and lights.”

“Really?”

He nodded. “I have family who lives nearby. There is a hotel with a circus. And there are showgirls who wear these dresses with feathers all over them. I went to a wedding there and it was radical, man. But people also get married there, like, with no warning at all. In other places you have to wait a couple days to fill out all the paperwork, but there you can do that all at the same time.”

She listened in rapt attention as he talked about it all. It sounded like such a cool place to be, Will and Mike looked equally as interested, and even Jonathan who was so sad all the time looked captivated by the magical world that was Las Vegas.

They had been on the road for hours and she felt herself get lulled to sleep by the rumble of the car and the exciting stories of Vegas and all the opportunities it held.

🕒

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Max Mayfield

Someone was knocking outside the door.

Max’s first instinct was panic as she shot out of bed at the sound, like the door would give way to Billy, screaming and carrying on about something or another. Then she remembered he was dead.

She pushed her hair out of her face and then buried her face in her hands. She was so tired- she had barely been able to sleep, her mind haunted in shades of red and creepy abandoned houses and red flash of the cop cars that had been coming through the neighborhood to stay outside the Munson’s trailer.

Someone was still knocking at the door.

She stifled a groan and went up to it. Her mother was passed out on the couch with an empty bottle of whiskey on the floor beside her.

She opened the door and saw Lucas standing there, letterman jacket and everything.

“Lucas?”

“Max,” he said and he looked relived.

“What’s going on? Why are you here so early in the morning?”

He nodded at the living room and she stepped aside to let him in.

“I know you wanted space, but things are going bad. Again.”

She felt her blood run cold.

“The Mind Flayer?”

He shook his head. “We don’t know what it is. I was with the basketball team yesterday and was there when they got the news about Chrissy. You hear about it?” he asked and she nodded

“They brought Eddie in.”

“Well, he’s out now,” he said. “I had to leave the team last night, they were acting… crazy. I got in touch with Dustin and he let me know that someone else got hit.”

The sinking feeling was more of a plummet now. “Who?’

“Fred. He was in journalism with Nancy. Did you know him? Or Chrissy?” his absently darted over in the direction of the Munson’s trailer.

She hesitated. “No, but I knew who they were,” she said. “Chrissy had the slot with the counselor before me. Fred had the one after.” She looked over at him. “Where is everyone?”

His face set into a grim image. “They’re down in the Wheeler’s basement.”

She nodded and darted into her room, closing the door long enough to quickly pull on some clean clothes and then she was back out, shoving her feet into her shoes and grabbing her skateboard from where it was resting by the door.

“Let’s go.”

🕒

???, Nevada, 1986

El Hopper

“There,” Murray said, voice coming through the radio up on the dashboard, “pull over.”

“How can you be sure- oh,” Joyce said before she suddenly swerved off the road in that direction. The radio clicked off.

El craned her head to look out the way Murray was pointing and she had to rub her eyes to make sure she was seeing correctly.

Because there, in front of them, was a door standing out of the middle of the desert.

They all walked out of the car hesitantly and El wished she had her powers back so she could scope the place out.

“How are we going to get in there? I don’t suppose any of us have a key to the mysterious bunker in the middle of the desert,” Murray asked drily.

“Fresh out,” Mike said.

“We could always just knock,” Will suggested. “It’s not like there’s any other way inside. They probably know were here too.”

“I feel like that’s a bad idea,” Jonathan said, crossing his arms tightly around his middle the way he did when he was feeling uncomfortable.

“I say we just head out of here,” Murray said. “All in favor?”

“There had to be some reason,” Joyce cut in. “Why would we get directions to this exact location if there’s no way for us to get in. Now I don’t exactly want to knock on the door either but I don’t see what other option we have, other than breaking it down.”

They all exchanged looks, and Jonathan opened his mouth

A screech cut through the air and El jolted, turning back to the door in time to watch as a slat in the middle of the door opened and a canister rolled out.

“Dudes, what the fuck is-”

And the it went off with a bang and she hardly see the flash before she immediately fell under darkness.

🕒

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Max Mayfield

It didn’t take long before she and Lucas got to the school between her skateboard and his bike.

Everyone else was already there and she felt late to the party.

“Max!” Dustin said excitedly. “You’re here.”

“Of course I am,” she said, managing a smile. Her head was hurting again.

“Max was telling me something-” Lucas was saying, but she felt her focus slipping, flashes of red, of clocks, and an old house that was familiar and not, all at the same time.

“-ax, Max”

She blinked too, and she saw everyone’s eyes on her. Eddie in particular was looking at her oddly.

“Headache,” she said. “Sorry.”

Lucas nodded, slowly, but still looked worried. “So, the guidance counselor’s office?”

“I can get into the office.” Eddie said.

They all turned to him.

“What? My dad was criminal. I mean, he mostly taught me how to hotwire a car, but lockpicking was definitely included.”

“That’s so cool,” Dustin breathed

“Hey, no life of crime,” Steve said and the retracted. “More than the life of crime were in right now. Out of necessity.”

“Don’t worry Steve,” Eddie said patting him on the back. “I won’t corrupt you children.”

“They’re not- they’re not my kids!” he said but they had already left.

“Oh,” Dustin said, as they ran towards the school. “We need to make a detour on the way back.”

🕒

???, Nevada, 1986

El Hopper

When she woke up all she was handcuffed on the floor. The others were there too.

From what she could tell they were all either unconscious, pretending to be, or were trying to wake up.

There was talking though, and she looked around the room until two figure started to come into focus, along with their words. A man and someone in a lab coat.

“-we get rid of all the others and just-” the man turned and when the scientist was pointing his face suddenly came into focus.

“Papa?”

“Eleven,” he said, and he didn’t say it with the warmth that Joyce did, or the fondness that Hopper had. Just that not-quite-cold way he had. “Can’t say I was expecting to see you up so soon, but all things considered, I’m not very surprised. It seems you may have built up a tolerance. The other should be waking up soon.”

“What are you doing here?” She hadn’t seen him since… when was it?

“I apologize that we couldn’t have met on more friendly terms, but there’s a standard protocol when they see people at the door. You understand.”

She frowned.

“Here,” he said crouching down next to her unlocking her cuffs.

“We will let everybody else go and then you will be able to relearn your powers. Remove the block.”

She just stared at him. She wanted to ask, wanted to demand how he knew, but they probably had been watching them, and it made her sick to think they had been doing so since they left for Lenora.

But despite it all, she couldn’t help but feel a bit of- hope?

“You really mean it?”

He nodded. He waved at the guards. “Unlock them. Here, you can even write them a note and when you finish up your training you can go back with them, if you want,” he tacked on. “I hear you have been having a hard time in school,” he said with almost concern.

She frowned. She didn’t like how he was talking. Sure, Lenora hadn’t been great, but there were parts she liked. It was hard catching up, but she liked learning cool things, like history or art or even science sometimes. “Joyce took me out of that school. We are going back to Hawkins.”

“And what makes you think it will be any different there?” He shook his head like he was trying to reason with a child. “At least if you have your powers, that will be one thing they can never take away from you.”

Except she had lost her powers, and unless he had a way to prevent her from losing them again, which considering she lost the powers he taught her about-

Not just him, her mind supplied and she blinked, memory fuzzy, on the cusp of remembering something. Her powers, him and -

“What about the message?” she said instead, something screaming at her not to go down that road.  “From Dr. Owens.”

Something flickered on his face. “He knew how to reach out to Joyce, he knew she’d bring you here. It all has to be very quiet, you know.”

“I understand,” she lied. “I need my powers back.”

“Yes, yes you do.”

Papa lies.

She missed her powers, she remembered far back, so far back that the memories were more feelings than words and images, how she wanted to belong. How she needed them to belong. She couldn’t remember why, but she did. And the powers had saved her from the bad men- Papa’s men. Because he was always trying to grab them.

Mike said he still liked her even though she didn’t have any powers and Max and Dustin and Lucas all were still her friend even though she was normal now. She knew Will and Jonathan and Joyce all loved her, but she was scared. Because they had closed the portal two years ago, but the Mind Flayer still came back- and it killed Hopper. And now something was in Hawkins again.

And Papa was here and she didn’t trust him because he was a liar and she didn’t know what to do without them. She needed to protect her friends. Because as much as they all wanted it to be over, and if she was really honest with herself, she didn’t think it was.

She knew Will felt the same way. She couldn’t feel the Upside Down like he could, but he couldn’t forget it either. They didn’t talk about it at all, but she knew he had nightmares sometimes because she would see him in the kitchen at midnight and he would just be standing there staring at nothing until he noticed her.

She let herself be led away from her family’s unconscious forms, down the hall, to the familiar chambers. Even though they were thousands of miles away, this place was almost a perfect replica of the old lab, down to the changing room and the tank.

She changed quickly and then knocked to indicate she was ready to go.

Solders escorted her over to the tank and she walked down the steps to the water.

She laid down in the tub. Sick with the thought that when she emerged, the others would be gone, on their way back to Hawkins. But Papa said she had to know this was for the best

But no, she did not know because Joyce wasn’t the type to leave someone behind, she thought it was too dangerous. Joyce would never put her in danger, never on purpose. Joyce would not leave without her. She remembered what Joyce had done when Will was missing, how she hadn’t stopped looking for him even after everyone told her that he was dead. She loved Will and El knew that Joyce loved her too. Joyce gave love freely and she did not lie, not about that, not about important things.

There were tapes playing on the screen in front of her, the key to her powers, or so Papa said,

She slammed her eyes shut and she probed into the darkness. The matte back gave way to something shiny and she could feel it again. It felt like after she had been standing for a long time and she needed to run, how she’d start out slow and then she would pick up speed until she was running like she used to.

She laid on her back in the immersion tank, reaching out for all of them to make sure they were safe. Papa said she could trust him, but she didn’t.

Papa lies a voice echoed in her head.

Her powers were weak, like the baby deer legs in that movie Bambi she and Will had watched and sworn to never watch again, but it was getting better.

Papa was right when he said there was a block, but the videos on the screen were old- before Hopper died. If there was a block that far back then it would have stopped her powers a long time ago.

She searched for the block, the way it tried to slip in her mind like a sickness, but she had always been good at finding, and in an instant, she had her grip on it in her mind.

It was a slippery thing, almost like a slug. It felt gross, like the Mind Flayer, which filled her with anger and with a powerful burst of energy, she obliterated it.

She felt a rush of relief wash though, and she wanted to gasp but she couldn’t. She grasped for her powers and found it, just barely, a fragile tether, but she had it in her hold once again.

She couldn’t reach far, not far outside the room, but she pushed her mind, trying to remember what Kali had taught her.

She didn’t know how far they were but she wasn’t going to stop until she found it.

She found Will first. She could feel him because there was the lingering of the Upside Down on him, the thing that connected them both, and she was drawn to it.

But he wasn’t miles away, he was a floor down and there was more to it than that. She pin-pointed the location and she expanded it. And she could see them all- Mike, Jonathan, Argyle, Murray, Joyce. But there were more in there-

There were the guards on the halls but then glass tubes materialized an she saw a Demogorgon suspended in these tanks and there was another person- a man.

Hopper.

Her heartrate picked up, she could hear clambering around outside the tank which meant that it was open now, but she refused to open her eyes, trying to cling to that image of him.

Her head breached through the surface of the water as they pulled her out.

“Eleven,” a man said and she opened her eyes.

“Dr. Owens?”

He nodded, and she somehow knew that he was different than Papa.

“What is going on?” Papa demanded.

“It is- it is so much,” she said, eye catching Dr. Owen’s and she saw the slight incline of his head. “I am so tired. Can I sleep?”

“You pushed yourself too far the first time,” Papa said and he did not sound pleased, but was not also angry, not quite. “You can’t expect to regain your powers like that on your own, it will take a while before you can start seeing like before.”

She nodded, keeping her head down

“I’ll take her back,” Owens offered and Papa nodded, dismissing them.

They handed her a towel and then Dr. Owens led her down the hall.

“What did you do?” she whispered

“I didn’t mean- I never meant to bring you back here, I just-”

“Hopper,” she said, glancing at him out of the corner of her eye.

He froze, but he nodded, almost imperceptibly. “He didn’t deserve to stay tied up down here.”

He took her down the next hall and there was no one there. He slipped a key into her hand, stripped the watch off his wrist. “Get them out.”

“What about you?”

“I’ll be okay. I have done a lot of things wrong, El,” he said, breathing in shakily, “I must atone.”

She shook her head. “Don’t say that.”

“Thirty minutes,” he said. “Take the key and run. The exit is on the top floor.”

🕒

???, Nevada, 1986

Jim Hopper

Hopper delirious, and he was half-convinced that this was some sort of daydream. Or day-nightmare. But if it was, it wasn’t what he would have imagined at all.

If this was a nightmare, El would be there, just out of reach- crying, begging him to be there, only he wasn’t, and she was suffering and dying just like Sara had. El was always first and foremost in his nightmares these days. Joyce was there too, a lot of them time, a never-ending loop of them down in the Russian hideaway.

He would be caught in those horrible fantasies, where his brain was somewhere between awake and asleep, just cognizant enough to understand what was going on, but not enough to pull himself out of it.

In those imaginings he fell off the scaffolding, Joyce disappearing from sight, or worse, being enveloped in the explosion. And then the fire would turn into the gate and El would be screaming as she tried to pull the gate back together. The vines would pull her through and then the gate would seal and he’d be left screaming for it to give her back, to do something, and he would claw at the wall until his fingers bled.

That was usually how they went.

The times he was more awake, the torture wearing off- which was becoming more and more frequent, he took in his surroundings. The dirty lab floor- because they could apparently hire a hundred scientists to poke and prod at him and the demo-whatever but they couldn’t find it in the budget to hire a janitor or some interior designer- and the never-ending grey of the walls. He swore that if he ever got out of here he never wanted to back to another lab or bunker or anything like that. Only above ground, some place with windows.

But in none of those waking nightmares were they here, chained up with him on the cold linoleum floor. It didn’t seem to be at the same caliber as the other horrors. This was tame, in comparison. Maybe he wouldn’t come-to screaming.

Joyce was the first to wake up. She glanced around, looking for something, someone, and then she turned, eyes fierce as ever

“Where is she,” Joyce screamed at Brenner. “Where is my daughter?”

Brenner was completely unbothered, the prick. The man was standing at lab table, inspecting his equipment.

But then Hopper felt a jolt- he was awake. He took in the others in the room. Will and Mike were here- much taller than he remembered them, almost like a few years had passes instead of a few months. Jonathan was here too with some other kid Hopper didn’t know, but who had some very long hair. And then there was Murray, and if anything confirmed that this was not a dream, it was that.

Joyce was fuming and Hopper went over the words she had said. Daughter- El.

“El’s here?”

Joyce spun around. “Hopper? You’re alive?”

“Where’s El?”

“Eleven is fine,” Brenner cut in, looking at the scalpels, holding them up to the light, as if to confirm they were sterile. He was very particular about that, making sure the basic rules of science were followed- sterile equipment, no outside variables- and yet he didn’t care so much about ethicality. “I just had a conversation with her. She has decided to stay here and relearn her powers.”

“She wouldn’t do that.”

“She would if I told her that I let you all go,” he said, the smug bastard. He waved her off. “It shouldn’t take more than a few months, maybe years. She shows a lot of promise. It will take a lot of work to declutter her mind from all those unnecessary distractions you polluted her head with, but she will be the future. With her in our arsenal, we can strike back against Russia for invading and we can find what they used to reopen parts of the portal and pull these out,” he gestured back at the floating Demogorgons.

“You’re still trying to mess with all that?” Murray shot at him, incredulous. “Haven’t you learned anything?”

“The Russians picked them up,” Brenner said, like that was a good excuse. “They were going to try and fly them over the ocean to Russia, as if putting these things on a boat or a plane isn’t the stupidest idea I’ve ever heard. We don’t know if these things could swim. Can you imagine what would happen if the plane crashed because they didn’t get the dosage right and these things swam to shore?”

“You guys intercepted these things? Are you fucking stupid?” Murray yelled, gesturing in disbelief at the glass tubes with floating Demogorgon.

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Hopper said from the floor.

“So you picked. Them. Up. And just… left them alive? And why do you have Hopper? We all thought he was dead.”

“We found him with the cargo,” a soldier said, cocking his gun in Hopper’s direction like it was a pointing stick and not a fully loaded automated weapon. “General said we couldn’t just let him out now that he knew what was going on.”

“You all are so fucking stupid-”Murray started and a guard came over and smacked his face against the metal pillar he was tied to.

The sound of the metal door scratching against the floor cut him off before he could say anymore.

“Dr. Owens,” Joyce said in disbelief. Owens hurried into the room barely sparing any of them a second glance.

“How is she?” Brenner asked

“Tired. It was a lot for the first day.”

Brenner nodded.

“I gave her some sedation to help keep her well rested.”

Brenner nodded. “Good, good.” He went to his keys, unlocking the cabinets behind him to reveal shelves upon shelves of video tapes. “I was thinking of progressing towards the time with the blocks soon. Maybe it will jolt her memories back.”

“I’m going to take their vitals,” Owens said, nodding down at the captives.

“They’re fine.”

“We need a baseline, or have you forgotten in your jubilation at having El back?”

Brenner made displeased face. “Do what you have to do,” he turned his back on him to pull more tapes out of the cabinet, each one specially selected. Owens kept looking at the clock, like he was waiting for something.

Owens crouched down next to Jonathan and the other teen and then moved slowly, deliberately as he wrote numbers down on his clipboard and moved on.

Hopper was watching them. Owens was the only one who never seemed to like what they were doing, but he didn’t stop it either. But he saw a flash of sliver, just the tiniest glint as he approached Murray and Joyce, like he had handed them something

There was a groan at the opposite side of the room but the door, a ringing sound like bolts giving way and then the door was blasted off its hinges.

“What the fuck-” one of the soldiers said but the El was there, sending them flying back. It took a lot out of her, Hopper could see that now, but then the others were on their feet. Jonathan wrenched the gun out of the scientist’s hand and shot another in the leg. Seemed like going to the gun range with Miss Wheeler had done him sone good. Murray had a handful of syringes and was stabbing them into scientists’ necks left and right, screaming like a madman, while Joyce ran to him, the keys shaking in her hands,

The metal of the key was warm from all the hand that had exchanged it, so much better than all this coldness he had encountered for months.

“Let’s go,” she yelled, but her touch was gentle and firm as she hauled him to his feet, and he missed her so much that if they weren’t in the middle of a shootout, he might have cried.

He nodded. She hoisted him to his feet with a lot of effort and she tried not to buckle under his weight.

“Not so fast,” Brenner said, his finger on the trigger of a government-issued pistol, barrel pointed in their direction.

🕒

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Lucas Sinclair

“I can’t believe you stole the radio from the school,” Steve grumbled

“First of all,” Dustin said, “it’s not stealing, it’s borrowing. Two, it’s not like Mr. Clarke was going to use it over spring break anyways.”

Steve ground out something unintelligible, but kept his hands glued to the wheel.

They had split up as soon as they had grabbed the guidance counselor’s notes. Nancy had skimmed though them and after a couple of minutes, she had picked up on a house with stained glass that kept popping up. And then to Lucas’ distress, Max admitted she had seen it to.

Nancy and Robin had embarked to the library, but not before they lent one of the walkies to them. Now they were trying to navigate through town, but with trouble.

“We should take a left,” Lucas said, huddled over the map in the backseat

“No, no, we should go on main street,” Dustin countered

“There’s a backroad,” Eddie countered.

“Could you all stop backseat driving back there,” Steve called out.

“Steve watch out!” Max screamed.

He slammed on the breaks, trying desperately to avoid careening into the gigantic crack in the asphalt in front of them on the road.

There was a loud bang, and he felt the tire blow out and Steve slammed harder on the break.

The breaking stopped them right before the edge, but the impact still threw them all forward with a lurch.

“Shit!” Steve said climbing out of the car.

“Steve,” Dustin called. “That crack is taking up the whole side of the road. But there’s tape right over there, not here though.”

Lucas frowned.

He hadn’t realized how close to the edge town they were, but now he could see the cones that had marked off Fred’s death were still standing, but the yellow tape was sagging, almost torn down so people could get by. A tarp had been laid down as a shitty means to preserve the evidence from the elements, but now it was barely doing anything.

Steve crouched next to the tire and groaned. “I think this thing is sliced through.”

“I can help,” Eddie volunteered and Steve went and grabbed to carjack out of the back.

Max sat on the hood and supervised them while Dustin wandered closer to the scene. Lucas trailed beside him, eye drifting back to Max every minute or so. She was getting antsy, but he couldn’t blame her. He didn’t know if whatever was killing everyone could work on people in moving vehicles, but it hadn’t so far and he knew Max was anxious to get going again.

“You can patch up the tire,” Max suggested

“Yeah, if you happen to have that expertise.”

“I know how to patch a tire.”

“Well, feel free to volunteer to help,” Steve said a bit sarcastically, but his eyes were watching her too, like Steve was always watching them, like he was scared they were going to die, but he couldn’t leave them.

“Has there always been a crack here?” Dustin asked.

Lucas turned his attention back to his friend and looked around and shook his head. “I don’t think so. But, to be fair with all the trees it’s kind of hard to tell where we are.”

Dustin reached into his pocket and pulled out his compass. “Dude look at this,” he said holding it up, face morphed into something disbelieving. Lucas stepped closer and he had to blink because the needle was spinning nonstop.

“It did this with Will,” Dustin said and Lucas was nodding, knowing what Dustin was about to do before he even did it.

“Hey what are you two-”

Steve had abandoned the car and was running up to them but Lucas was barely even paying him any attention, because Dustin was reaching down and pulling up the tarp.

The crack wasn’t especially substantial, but it went deep, probably at least a few feet. It hadn’t opened much, likely because the asphalt had provided some resistance, but there was undeniably a darkness there and a faint reddish light, almost pulsating.

“A gate,” Dustin breathed and Lucas nodded, unable to speak because this looked exactly like the one they saw at Hawkins Middle School three years ago, but underneath the vines there was almost a life to it.

“What are you two doing- Holy shit,” Steve said, he stepped back running his hands through his hair.

Lucas felt someone come up to his side, their warmth cutting through the November chill that had settled on him on this spring day. Max wasn’t saying anything either, but he knew she knew what it was just as well as the rest of them did.

Eddie looked woozy.

“Are you okay?” Lucas managed, but Eddie just shook his head.

“Those were on my ceiling,” he said, “back after Chrissy-”

“We need to go there,” Dustin blurt out

They all turned to him.

Steve raised one eyebrow at them. He had the rag thrown over his shoulder as he changed the tire. “You want us to break into an active crime scene?”

“Yes,” Dustin said simply, but with the determination he had when they were about to do their craziest plans.

“Do you remember how hard it was just to get to the outside of the trailer park? Do you not remember that that place was shut down?”

“Yeah, but now there’s been two murders. The police department is only like, four people. You can see they already left this place.”

“To be fair,” Lucas said, “the integrity of this scene is going to deteriorate the fastest. They’re going to guard the one they can actually preserve.”

Dustin looked at him oddly. “How would you know that?”

“I watch a lot of 60 minutes,” he said with a shrug. He watched a lot more than that now. When he couldn’t sleep, he’d go out to the living room and watch crimes shows now, not that he ever told anybody. It was a habit he started years ago, back when Will went missing. He learned things back then, like most people only have 48 hours after they’ve been taken captive, that people like Will didn’t usually go missing and come back.

His dad was watching one night after he and Erica were supposed to be asleep, but he was going down the stairs to get some water and he saw the tv on from between the bars of the banister. He had heard his parents whispering after Will went missing, things like I can’t even imagine and poor Joyce poor Will. And then Will had come back and everything had been fine again, but it also wasn’t.

Will wasn’t the same, and if he was really honest, none of the party was really the same after that again. Dustin had become obsessed with learning as much as he could about the supernatural stuff, Mike had become weird with them all, despite his best efforts, he spent time with them, but he was close, and yet distant, prickly with newcomers. It had only gotten worse after Will got possessed.

Will- Will was never the same, but that was wasn’t all that surprising, not really. He still hung out with all of them, but Lucas noticed when Will thought they weren’t looking, he would get this distant look in his eye, almost haunted and Lucas was sharply reminded about how they could never forget it all.

It was easier to look back and focus on the cooler part of the story, about the girl with superpowers, and not the fact that their friend had been held captive and then subsequently possessed all within the span of a year.

And Lucas- he was just trying to learn how to move forward when the past ached so much sometimes he could still feel it, even now, years later.

Steve did not look happy, but he also didn’t object. “Okay, well go, but-” he said when Dustin began to whoop- “we’re going to be careful about it.”

“Duh,” Lucas and Dustin said together and Max smirked.

“You understand I care about you, you little shits, right?” he asked them. He dropped his hand over his face and let it drag down. “You know that’s why I come with you guys.”

“Aw Steve, you’re not the babysitter, you’re like the mom.”

“Hey, wait a second-”

Lucas laughed and Dustin’s face lit up. “I can see it.”

They started laughing and Steve couldn’t help but laugh after them.

Lucas felt Max drift closer to him as they approached the car

Max seemed happier than she had in a while, but he could feel unease growing inside her.

They kept down the road when her hand jerked for the door, her eyres blurring out.

“Woah,” Steve yelled, yanking the car to a stop again, just before she yanked the door open and was stumbling out.

She was moving like a zombie, like she was possessed, aside from hand fidgeted for her Walkman She had mentioned the sound of the music was the only thing that had been helping to drown him out the voices.

After that it all happened in a blur. She began floating up into the air out of their reach, and he was screaming himself hoarse, and then her body just dropped.

He wept with relief, pulling her close, her hands clinging to him too.

🕒

???, Nevada, 1986

Mike Wheeler

In a moment, the whole lab descended into chaos. El screamed, sending Brenner’s gun flying across the lab. She dove into his space and punched Brenner directly in the face.

Mike was up on his feet in a second, running for the cabinets, Will there beside him.

He dumped out one of the boxes full of science stuff onto the floor and he started sweeping the video tapes into to box. Will swooped in, and then they were both using their arms to knock all the tapes off the counter into the duffle bag.

“Hurry hurry hurry,” Jonathan chanted urgently by the door, head stuck out into the hall as he held it open.

There was the crash of glass and out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hopper break out the emergency ax and with a burst of sudden strength he swung it straight through the cases holding the Demogorgons, straight through the neck of the beast, severing the head cleanly from its body.

Hopper sagged in exhaustion.

Ms. Byers had caught him, but not before taking out two of the soldiers through sheer force of will.

“Kids we have to go!” Ms. Byers yelled to them. She was holding up Hopper, but she was buckling under him. Murray ran over to grab his other side. El was still disoriented but she was coming-to faster.

She reached for the overhead tv and ejected the tape and handed that to the boys

“Come on, let’s go,” Mike urged and then they were all running back out of the lab as fast as their legs could carry them, as fast as Joyce and Murray could drag Hopper who was dead on his feet.

Will ripped the fire safety layout off the wall.

“This way,” he yelled

🕒

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Dustin Henderson

Dustin had watched in terror as Max rose from the ground, like those wire pulleys they used in drama, but there were no strings here, just peril.

He didn’t know how it was happening, why it was. How Vecna- as they had dubbed him after Max told them about his face, their conversation- could physically manipulate another person’s body from the Upside Down. Will had been able to manipulate light, a bit of electricity, from the Upside Down, but another human was something else entirely.  El could do that, but not from a dimension away and she was the most powerful person he knew. And if this guy was stronger than her, why had he waited?

“All of this is not making sense,” he said to the party plus extras as he paced back and forth across the Wheeler’s basement. “What do we know about the Upside Down?”

“Will would know the most.”

“But he’s not here right now,” Dustin bit out in frustration. They knew what Max saw but that was just a piece of the puzzle, myopic, really. And that was how this thing was going to get them, because they weren’t thinking bigger.

“We know about the house,” Max volunteered sliding the pieces of paper forward, “but this Vecna guy, he’s not everything at play. I don’t know why, but I can feel it.”

Lucas nodded, walking forward. “With the Demogorgon we had to think big picture, not just on this one tiny aspect. Ms. Byers and Hopper went to the Upside Down; Nancy, Jonathan, and Steve tried to get the Demogorgon and El finished it off; also there was that whole government aspect in it. Same with the Mind Flayer, the first time. We hit the tunnels, while they tried to get the Mind Flayer out of Will, and El closed the gate. It’s always coming at us from different fronts.”

Nancy barged into the room, Robin trailing behind her. “We found the house,” she said. “Turns out there aren’t a lot of houses in the area with stained glass.” She slapped down the newspaper. “It belongs to the Creel house.”

“The what house?”

“The one where that family got murdered,” Robin piped up, offering her copies of information. “Mom and daughter died just like this. Son went into a coma, Dad, the suspect, had the same thing done to him, but he survived.”

“He did?” Max asked, leaning forward.

“Just barely. Apparently, someone heard screaming and came by the house and they opened the door and found the family. It was him on the floor, cradling his family, or trying to.”

“Sounds like the trance was broken,” Lucas said

“That’s insane,” Steve shook his head

“Not as much as this,” Nancy said. “He had a whole confession where he spouted off crazy things and then one week later, he killed himself and people said it was the guilt.”

“Or a coverup,” Steve said, turning the paperwork around. “That’s a government seal on that. Why would they interview him? It’s the lab, not a psychiatric facility,” Steve said.

“What?” Eddie asked, confused. “’The Lab?’ What is that.”

“The lab’s basically been the ground zero for all of this stuff,” Dustin explained. “They opened the portal. They’re the ones that were holding a bunch of kids with superpowers in their basement. It makes sense that they would try to look into anything supernatural..”

“I feel like we’re missing something.”

“We’re probably missing a lot of stuff. But we need the details, everything we can remember.”

“The tunnels stretched for miles,” Lucas said. “They were webbed but not as slimy as whatever is in the Upside Down. Mike said that Bob said that the tunnels avoided water,” Lucas added. Dustin wrote it down.

“It likes it cold,” Nancy said after a moment. “Joyce said that Will wouldn’t even get in the bath either.”

“No water,” Dustin wrote, underlining it.

“It hates fire, heat. That’s how we drove it out of Will.”

“That how we tested Billy,” Max said, “it made him insanely strong. He almost broke out of the sauna.”

“Will slipped his binds,” Nancy said carefully. “He tried to strangle Joyce.”

“What?”

“He had his hand around her throat and he wouldn’t let go,” Nancy said, “so I stabbed him in the side with a fire poker.”

Dustin felt any words he had catch in his throat.  It was easy to be kind of cavalier about the whole thing, joke about it all to an extent, this wasn’t like that. He was with Steve during all of that, and then he was with Lucas and Max. He hadn’t been there with Will and Mike when he was possessed. Will smiled and acted like it wasn’t a big deal, but Mike didn’t talk about it at all. But that-

“The Mind Flayer left not long after that,” Nancy said, clearing her throat.

Dustin swallowed the rock in his throat.

“Oh,” she added, looking back up. “When Joyce and Hop were down in the Upside Down, looking for Will, we could follow them.”

“Wait what, what do you mean?”

“You remember the Christmas lights? We were in the house all the lights were off but then they just started lighting up.”

“I remember that,” Steve said, “one at a time.”

Nancy nodded fervently.

“But they can’t see us from our end?” Dustin asked. “Where are the Byers when you need them,” he muttered. “Why is it easier for them to reach over here that it is for us to reach back?” Dustin pondered. “They can light up here. Will could make the lights flash, the radio turn on, call from the other side, but we couldn’t really call back over. We needed El for that.”

“We could hear them almost like an echo,” Nancy said. “It wasn’t really clear though.”

“But how was Will able to see all that stuff?” Lucas asked. “He didn’t know about the Christmas lights or the letters because Ms. Byers put them up after he went missing.”

“The letters?” Eddie and Max asked simultaneously.

“Yeah, Ms. Byers panted the whole alphabet on the living room wall,” Steve waved off, as if that was the normal part of the story.

“Or the lamps,” Nancys said. “My mom said that Will’s room was full of lamps.”

“True sight,” Dustin breathed and Lucas’ eyes hot over to him. “We theorized it before when he was possessed but what if he got it before, when he was first in the Upside Down.”

“Should I stay or should I go?” Nancy said

“What?” Steve asked.

“You should probably stay,” Robin said, looking between them all uncomfortably. They really couldn’t afford to lose her at this stage of, well, everything.

“What? No- the song.”

“It’s a good song,” Eddie offered, just as confused. “I don’t know how it will help.”

“We played it for Will, when he was possessed. Fuck. I didn’t even remember it because-” she trialed off.

“Because Jonathan, Will, Mike, and Joyce aren’t here,” Steve pieced together.

“Oh, I’m so stupid,” she said. She flipped through the statements on file and pulled out the one on Creel. “Right here,” she said, jabbing at the text, “Dream a Little Dream of Me. A throwaway line,” she shook her head. “He said he thought he heard it because he was dreaming but he wasn’t, not completely. He was still awake. He only sees what Vecna made him see. But he could still hear the music”

“So, what, Chrissy died because I didn’t have the fucking radio on?” Eddie asked, incredulous.

“It’s not a guarantee. I mean, it was playing, the officers said the radio was on when they got there, but his wife and daughter were both dead.”

“So how do we pull them out?” Eddie asked. “What did you do for Will?”

She ran her hands though her hair. “It wasn’t the same. This isn’t a full-on possession. The music helped get to Will, but we had to do some other stuff to drive the Mind Flayer out.

“Mind Flayer,” he mouthed, still reeling from all the information.

“It’s the music,” Max said after a moment. “I- it pierced through for me. But Steve’s radio didn’t”

“So songs with an emotional connection,” Dustin said. “That song was Will’s song with Jonathan.”

🕒

???, Nevada, 1986

Will Byers

They all shoved in the back of the car, a place that had been so spacious when they were kids. Back then, the spaces between their seats were like an ocean for their actions to get lost in the abyss between their seats.

But now they were older, and they took up every inch of space, and their arms were in the other’s space, feet cramped and twisted to fit in the back. And Will didn’t know when they got too old for this too.

He had to stop before that line of thinking got to him, too.

They all knew that Will had had a hard time in the Upside Down. They knew about the Mind Flayer and the grip it had, but things had changed since it had become a real, tangible thing. Once it had been killed.

If life had been a movie or a book, then the Mind Flayer’s defeat would have signaled an end to his torment, and he would be able to heal without it’s talons gripped in his soul. Maybe it was easier for the others, but for him it was not.

There was so much grief in him, for the person he was before the Upside Down, the person he was as he was whittled down during his possession, and for him now, who felt like he was stumbling through development but had missed several crucial steps.

He had tried to cling onto the past like a child, but he knew it was no good and only made people upset and he didn’t want them to worry about him. He really didn’t.

He couldn’t hide it well that first year, because the Mind Flayer was taking over, but he got better after he was freed from that, but he still hurt. Sometimes he wanted to talk to El about it, because she had been though something just as big- bigger even, but it was so different. She had been locked up for years, used for her powers, and she had finally broken though. She was stronger than him.

He had been taken and had hidden in the dark for days, so afraid. El had it worse, but she was brave. She had agency. She moved forward and grew.

His mom already worried so much, Jonathan too. So, he decided to push himself forward, to finally start acting like an adult. If he was being honest with himself, it wasn’t much of a change. He wasn’t sure how much of a kid he had ever been outside his art and DnD.

But there were days when he would just feel so sad and they world would feel so cold and dark and lonely. He wanted to be normal, he wanted this to stop hurting so much, all the time. And he would look at El who was adapting, seeing new things, how she was able to be happy, while he was still so broken. He got older but a part of him was stuck back there, a part of him had died in the Upside Down.

He didn’t know what his mom was thinking about all of them cramming into the car and the U-Haul, if she felt the same sad nostogia, but they were on the run from the government racing head-first into another apocalypse, so he supposed that was probably the least of their worries.

El had wanted to be alone, and it was painfully quiet, but despite that neither of them seemed to want to break it, and Will wasn’t sure why they felt that way. Mike had always been the type of person to be direct, at least for the most part, but he wasn’t like that with El.

He had been, he knew. El told him about what Mike had been like when they met, how he was nice to her, showed her where the bathroom was, even though Dustin and Lucas were freaking out

“Why?” he had asked. He assumed it was about finding a strange girl in the woods, that was the way they always talked about it, the few times they mentioned her in that year after. They didn’t talk about much- it made Mike upset, though he talked about her some, but he heard the most of it from Lucas and Dustin. The story about making Troy pee and catching Mike when he jumped off that cliff.

(And something- twisted- dreadfully in him when he heard that. Because he knew, even if they played it off as a joke, that Mike would be gone if El hadn’t been there. Mike was never good at bluffing, always too headstrong and earnest to be anything but. If he had gone through with what Troy wanted, he would have been dead forever and how was Will supposed to live without Mike there, his best friend? He would have been devastated if any of his friends had died but something about it felt different, even back then (oh, how obvious it was now))

“Mike gave me some clothes because Benny’s shirt was wet from the rain. I was going to change and they got very upset.”

“What?” Will- he must have been missing something. “I’m not understanding. What is the big deal about that? You change all the time. It’s normal.”

“I was going to get changed in the middle of the basement,” she said drily like she almost thought it was funny except it so obviously wasn’t.

When he couldn’t find anything to say, she shrugged. “In the lab we did not have privacy. I did not know that was not something you do.”

Something quiet, akin to fury, crept through him.

“Fuck them.”

El looked at him carefully, like she was a bit taken aback.

“It was a long time ago.”

“Not really,” he said, because if anyone knew how heavy, how long and short these last few years had been, it was El.

She ducked her head down and nodded. “Well, I know now. I did not know then. I know many more things now.”

“You’re very smart El.”

“I am still learning.”

“Even the smartest people in the world learn new things all the time. That’s life, you can’t know the whole world.”

“Maybe that is why they tried to find the other one. They got bored.”

“They need to take a hike.”

El laughed. “But he explained things and showed me the La-Z-boy and gave me food. He was very nice.”

Something clenched in his chest at the thought. She was always wanting to learn, learning to want.

El eyed his paints and stuff once. She was subtle about it, but Will noticed it. El didn’t outright ask for a lot of things. She had been pretty quiet since Hopper died and Mom took her under her wing like it was nothing. And it was- El was nice and cool, but she was quiet too, which fit in well with him and Jonathan.

“Here,” he said. “You can use those you know.”

“They’re yours,” she said, carefully handing back the colored pencils.

“We can share,” he insisted. “We can ask Mom for some stuff too, for your birthday.”

Her eyes widened a bit in awe. “Really?”

He nodded.

So they brought it up to Mom. Money had always been tight- had been even more since the move, but Mom found a way to make it work. They got some paints, and so crayons for her and they couldn’t really afford to buy canvas, but they had a reem of printer paper.

El liked pretty things and it wasn’t like Will could blame her- he was an artist. She wanted to do her hair but neither Will nor Jonathan knew how to braid so that left it up to Mom.

“Well, I haven’t done this in a long time, even longer since I did it on someone else.”

“Whose hair were you braiding?”

“Oh, Nancy’s.”

“Nancy?” Will felt his eyes bug out of his head.

“Why were you doing Nancys hair?” El asked.

“Well,” Mom said, pulling El’s hair back and parting it into three sections, “Nancy was still really little, she didn’t really need my help all that much, but Karen- Mrs. Wheeler- her sister went into labor so Karen needed someone to watch Nancy and Mike for a couple of hours after school. And you know Mike and Will were already friends and Jonathan and Nancy were the same age and Lonnie wasn’t there so I volunteered.”

Jonathan made a face. “I remember that. Nancy shoved me in the mud.”

Will laughed.

“I figured they would have more fun playing than sitting in hospital chairs. And Karen, she agreed to it. I swear that is the only time I’ve seen her look that frazzled. Not even when she had Holly and her water broke all over the kitchen floor. But you know Mrs. Wheeler.”

“I do not,” El said stiffly. “I have not really met her. Hiding,” she explained and Mom scrunched her brows. “Oh, I guess I never thought about that. I guess I assumed you had met since you and Mike have been dating? For so long.”

“We were together, then I dumped his ass, and now we are together again.”

“Dumped his-” she looked over at Will face begging for an explanation.

“Mike lied and Max said that boyfriends lie and that I should not have to put up with lying. So I dumped his ass.”

“Oh, okay,” she said with a laugh. “Why was Mike lying? That’s not really like him.”

Will cleared his throat subconsciously and then their eyes fell on him.

“Will, do you know something?”

“Uh.”

“Friends don’t lie,” El said, narrowing her eyes. “Brothers don’t lie.”

He cleared his throat. “Okay, so from what I got, Hopper told Mike he needed to go home, said something about him mom calling and then when they were in the car he told Mike he needed to take some time apart or he would keep you apart,” He looked sheepish. Was he supposed to even say that when Hopper was dead?

Mom huffed. “That was so like him.”

“He does not like to use words,” El quoted and Mom nodded.

“I know he meant well but he was a little headstrong- stubborn,” she amended at El burgeoning confusion.

“But boyfriends shouldn’t lie either, just like friends,” Mom said. “Boyfriends are supposed to be friends first, right?”

“Right,” El said uncertain

“Okay, I think I’m done. what do you think?”

El looked in the mirror. “Pretty,” she said

And El kept being like that, being better. She saw beauty in things, she forgave Mike for last summer, she kept going and going and going, all while he kept getting caught, the past snagging on his fraying mind.

He leaned his head against the glass of the window, willing his mind not to slip into melancholy, the grief stepping in place of the rapidly-fading adrenaline.

🕒

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

They had been camped out for who knew how many hours when there was a knock on the basement door. Nancy got up to tell her mom they just needed a little more time, but was surprised to open the door and see Erica.

“Erica?”

All of Erica’s usual bravado was gone and she looked past Nancy. “Lucas, Mom and Dad got a call. Patrick is dead.”

Nancy felt her blood run cold. “Where?” she asked and Erica looked at her odd.

“By the lake,” she said. “On the lake, I guess.”

Lucas’ face shuttered, while Dustin shuffled through his papers searching for the map of town, marking it off.

“What’s going on,” Erica asked, before it seemed to dawn on her. “More Upside Down stuff?”

“Yes,” she said, and she gave a brief summary, how the guy- whoever he was- was taunting them, how he seemed to be picking them off one by one.

Erica walked over to the map a long moment before she looked up, unimpressed.

“It’s a clock.”

“What?”

“The guy’s obsessed with clocks, right? Dungeon master over here,” she jabbed her thumb in Eddie’s direction, “said Chrissy thought she heard a clock and Max is out here saying that every time she saw Prince Charming there was a clock about to chime midnight and turn her into a pumpkin. Then this creepy guy said he said clocks embedded into walls. It’s obviously clock.”

“What?”

She huffed in a do-I-have-to-do-everything-around-here sort of way and held out her hand for the map.

Nancy handed one over, watching her with rapt attention.

“The guy attacked here, here, and here,” she said.

“But that’s south.”

“No,” Dustin said. “It’s North, at least it is in the Upside Down,” he said, flipping the map over, the ink already bleeding through to the other side. “Our south is his north.”

Nancy nodded.

“He’s hunting his prey and luring them out until they get into the new section. That’s why the kid strayed so far from Eddie’s house. We had been stuck on why Vecna made  him wander so far away from the trailer park since he obviously has no qualms about killing there. But this…”

They took the map and flipped it back over, drawing a line across at north to south, east to west and then the third from each quarter. Each one of them laying solidly at that time.

“Holy shit.”

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Eddie Munson

Eddie watched in a mixture of amazement, awe, and horror as they drew more cross sections on the map.

“Here,” Steve said, leaning closer to take in the map. “They’re all about the same distance apart.”

“All from the center of Hawkins,” Dustin murmured.

Nancy nodded. “Where Max was almost hit and where Patrick was killed are very close to one another. Same sliver of the map.”

“So, what?” Eddie asked, incredulous. “He's going to kill twelve people?” He looked between them all, hoping someone would refute it, tell him he was being dramatic, but none of them did.”

“And then he’ll turn into a pumpkin at midnight. Or Hawkins turns into that tattered Cinderella dress,” Robin said, her attempt at levity crushed under the reality of the situation.

She pushed back to lean into her chair. “But this all doesn’t make any sense.”

Dustin furrowed his brow. “It will,” she said. “We’re just missing something big.”

“What we’re missing is how this all ties to the Creel house,” Nancy said. “We drove past it after Eddie’s uncle said they had similar deaths. This just shows were on the right track. We think the dad did it. That the summoning or whatever got out of hand.”

“It wouldn’t be the first time someone bit off more than they could chew when it came to the Upside Down,” Dustin said.

“Are we sure it even had anything to do with the Upside Down?” Lucas asked. “I mean, aside from there being the same MO, there wasn’t – it wasn’t a normal Upside Down thing. The Upside Down sends monsters to kill. This wasn’t like that.”

“You know,” Dustin said slowly, “If something weird happened in Hawkins, you know where they would have it?”

“The hospital,” Lucas said simply. “That’s where Will had to keep going all the time. They’ve been around forever and we know they were connected to the lab.”

“Wait, the one that burned down?” Eddie asked. His eyes scanned all of them, face paling. “Or not burned down, I’m guessing.”

“The place got attacked by demodogs from the tunnels,” Dustin waved off, as if any of this was making sense, as if that could possibly be the natural conclusion.

“But that means,” Nancy said, sitting up, “that they probably didn’t get the chance to clear everything out. It might all still be there.”

“How are you going to get into the hospital? Wasn’t that place destroyed by the demodogs or whatever? Didn’t they have to block off the door? Who knows if there's even any research left,” Steve asked.

“Those dogs were after food, not paper. They probably knocked them on the ground, but everything’s probably still there.” Nancy worried her lip. “Though there could still be some demodogs around. When we unlock the door, we’ll have to be prepared in case we have to fight back against those things,” Nancy said, nodding with determination.

“Yeah,” Dustin chirped up. “What are a few demodogs to a couple of seasoned fighters.” He mimicked swinging a baseball bat.

“Great, I love how we're just saying that like it’s a normal thing,” Robin said under her breath.

“You all are insane,” Lucas shook his head, but he wasn’t protesting.

 Eddie felt faint and way out of his depth.

🕓

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

It was a good twenty-minute drive to the lab, though with the tension refusing to settle in the car, it felt simultaneously longer and shorter.

None of them had been in there the last time, it had only been Ms. Byers, Mike, Will, Bob, and Hopper, but the last two were dead and Ms. Byers, Mike, and Will had fallen off the face of the planet with Jonathan. 

Ms. Byers didn’t talk about what happened at the hospital much, though not from lack of questions on Nancy’s end. She wanted to understand what had happened and Ms. Byers had talked about it as much as she could, but she had still been grieving Bob and so Nancy hadn’t pushed as hard. And it had been easy to forget about the hospital when they were soon after doing an exorcism in the Byer’s shed.

Now she wished she knew more so they would have a better idea about what they were walking into, but she didn’t regret holding back, not back then.

They were essentially going in blind, though the good thing was that it was an old office building, so there would hopefully be a directory in the lobby, if it wasn’t all exploded.

They had Molotov cocktails in the backseat, she, Eddie, and Robin holding onto them so they wouldn’t jostle or spill all over the backseat.

Nancy bit her lip. “I don’t know if they’re dead or alive or what.”

“Haven’t they been locked up in there for years?” Eddie asked, eyes darting back and forth from the hospital to the road, like he was trying to find a way out of all this, but not actually making the move to do so. He had a death grip on the bottles in his hands.

“We don’t know if they can live without food. All we do know is that if there are any still alive in there, they’re going to attack anything they can get their mouths on. I don’t know if they get hungry, but they attack like they’re starving.”

“It’s basic ecology,” Dustin had said.

“What the fuck are you even talking about,” Steve had asked, incredulous.

“There's a level of energy that transfers from whatever you’re eating to your body. It’s just a theory,” he started, but he was getting into it. “In the Upside Down they’re all connected to the hive, right? They have that energy source right there, but when they’re up here it's weaker. They can all still communicate with each other, but it’s less than that. They’re not eating us for nutrition but for that residual energy

It had sparked a heated debate for the remaining half hour it took for them to prepare everything they needed for the trip to the abandoned hospital, but it made Nancy think. The energy theory with the Upside Down was intriguing and it had merit. The lights flickered when the gates were activated, and that wasn't even touching the Christmas lights thing, but it made her more worried about the hospital. The place had been completely devoid of energy for years. Who knew what was lying on the other side.

“What are we looking for?” Robin asked.

“Anything about anything weird in Hawkins.”

“We don’t even know if they have anything in here that we're looking for.”

“This hospital has been involved in every freaky thing that’s happened in Hawkins for who-knows-how-long. You can bet that if some man was claiming a monster made his family die, there was no way they weren’t going to at least an in-depth interview with him. And it’s the best thing we’ve got,” Nancy said with determination, but even her bravado couldn’t cover up how much she knew this was a longshot, but it was all they had. “The asylum and everybody else thought Victor Creel was insane, everything out of his mouth was disregarded as ramblings of a mad man or someone who was desperately trying to cover up the fact that he killed his whole family. But the hospital might know more.”

Her car pulled to a stop in front of the gate and they all let themselves out.

The front door had been chained up, but it didn't take Eddie long to pick through it and for them to let themselves in.

The first thing she noticed were the rotting demodog guts everywhere.

That answered that question.

The place was empty of most of the old stuff. At some point it had been cleared out, moved somewhere else.

They split up, Eddie and Steve heading downstairs, while she and Robin went up. The walkie buzzed on her hip.

Steve went down in the basement pulling out the hazmat suits while Robin and Nancy scoured the records room.

Nancy looked through the files. So many of them were interesting, but she had to skim.

“That’s horrible,” Robin said from over her shoulder

“Do you mind?” she asked, trying to keep her irritation at bay. She wasn’t sure how good she was at it- patience had never exactly been her strong suit.

“Sorry,” Robin said sheepishly.

Nancy, shook her head. They were working together. She put the file on one of the old dusty desks for them both to look at.

The scene was gruesome, even with the pictures as old and grainy as they were. There was no denying that the Creel family had been murdered. And there was also no denying that Chrissy and Fred had been killed in the exact same way. She closed the file and tucked it into her backpack.

“Hey, what was the name of the kid that survived?”

“Henry,” Nancy said absently. “The police report said he fell into a coma.”

“Well, it looks like he woke up.”

Nancy turned and Robin was holding up a file, with a very awake, and definitely older picture of Henry Creel.

“Meet 001, the first subject in the Hawkins lab.”

🕓

???, Nevada, 1986

Will Byers

Hopper had been in a state when they found him.

They had to all but carry him out of the base. They shoved him in the car and the rest of them were in the moving van. It wasn't until they reached a town a couple dozen miles away that they were finally able to pull over and resituate everything and secure everything down so Hopper could lay out in the U-Haul and didn’t have to worry about furniture or boxes full of stuff falling on him, causing substantially more damage than what he was already trying to recover from.

El was worried about her dad, so she stayed in the back with him. It hadn't even been a question. Mom was in the back with him and Murray was too, he had a notepad so he could write down everything Hopper knew about the government facility, which meant it was just him, Mike, Jonathan and Argyle in the front car

There was space between the front and back seat which made him feel more isolated with Mike. The air between them just felt awkward and he didn’t know how to fix it. Mike was treating him differently and Will knew it was his fault. Mike hadn’t been wrong when he said Will didn’t reach out enough. He could have tried more, sent more letters. Will was the one that made things weird. He was the one that disappeared, he was the one that wasn’t normal. And when Mike had the choice between talking to his girlfriend and his friend, it really wasn’t much of a discussion.

In California, he could almost convince himself he was able to manage this feeling, but if anything it just brought more truth to light.

Will didn’t know when he fell in love with Mike Wheeler. He supposed he always loved him, like he loved Dustin and his curiosity and Lucas and his daring. He liked how Mike could look anything in the face, completely unflappable. When someone was mean he was there and he told them to ignore them. He was sure of who he was, back then. Back when they were kids and everything was simpler.

He didn’t see that version of him when he was around El. He was unsure, trying to please her, second guessing what he said, what he meant, and sure, Mike could be a jackass sometimes and he needed to think before he spoke, but that came with the territory of being a teenager and opening your mouth.

He supposed he had been infatuated with Mike in a way he wasn’t with Lucas and Dustin, if he was using El’s word of the day correctly. He wanted Mike’s attention a little bit more, and he knew that when he saw his friends, his attention snagged on Mike more often than he would ever admit. It wasn’t enough to be noticeable, or if it was, no one ever said it.

He wasn’t sure when he fell, but he did know when he knew that was what this was.

When he was twelve, that was about when he noticed it was more than normal friendly admiration, when he felt that sinking feeling in his stomach. Because when they were twelve, Mike and Lucas were gushing about Jennifer Hayes and how shiny her hair was and Dustin was unsubtly crushing on Nancy. But the truth was that those crushes and variations of that had started popping up subtly for the past year or so, when girls weren’t as yucky

(Which Will never understood in the first place. His mom was a girl and she wasn’t yucky. She was the best ever. Even Nancy wasn’t bad either, when she wasn’t giving them all the stink eye.)

His mom said that crushes were normal, that Jonathan had probably had a crush when he was their age. To which Jonathan blushed furiously and ducked away.

(It had been Nancy Wheeler. He used to come by and pick Will up and he would sit with Nancy in the kitchen and they would talk about math class or the book they were reading in English. Nancy Wheeler wasn’t a bad girl to like. She was smart and she was pretty and she was nice too. But then she and Jonathan stopped spending time together and that made his brother sad. He didn’t like to talk about it, how Nancy Wheeler might have been his only friend but he was too much of a freak to keep her).

But he had probably had a crush on Mike before. Mike was lively- all his friends were- but there was something about the way his eyes lit up during a campaign, even in the dim light of the basement. Before he turned twelve, he knew liking boys was wrong. But before he was twelve, that didn’t matter as much because he could have just been confused. But at twelve, he knew what a crush was, and there was no denying it. It was wrong and terrible, and people at church said people like him burned, that God could see everything you did, saw your disgusting thoughts, saw your heart.

But the worst part was that it didn’t even feel bad at all. He knew who he was, what he was like, and he knew Mike would never feel the same and he had made peace with it. He wouldn’t force it on Mike because Mike liked girls and that hurt, that he would never like him back (it was for the best, he knew- Will ruined everything, even if he didn’t mean to, but he wouldn’t ruin this too).

And then he had been pulled into the Upside Down and he thought this must be the hell he was destined for, this was punishment.

And then he had escaped, he had lived, and then he got possessed and any hope that he wasn’t being punished was gone, and then he was fine, but not really. He was wrong and the world was trying to purge him from itself but it seemed even hell didn’t want him.

They had come to a stop about half an hour ago so that they could eat and stretch their legs. He was anxious to get back to Hawkins- though whether it was to finally get it over with, to reunite with his friends, or just escape the oppressive awkwardness of the car, he didn’t know.

But he did know that nothing felt better than stretching his legs.

He took one of the wrapped sandwiches and sat on the hood of a car in the lot they were parked in.

He could see that El and Hopper were in the middle of some emotional reunion still and he didn’t want to be involved with all of that. Jonathan and Argyle were over with Murray and Mom discussing the map.

“Can I sit here?’

He glanced up to see Mike standing awkwardly in front of him. He had finally stripped out of the bright colors that never really suited him and was in a plain t-shirt and dark jeans. Will had to look away.

“Sure,” he said, scooting over.

Mike settled on the hood next to him. He took a deep breath.

“Mike-”

“Will-”

“You can go first,” Will said.

“I wanted to say sorry, for yesterday. I was a jerk, accusing you for not helping El and for not talking,” he slumped. “You were right, I didn’t reach out.”

Will swallowed down his bite of sandwich feeling like he had swallowed a rock. “I could have written more,” he confessed. “But I also know it’s not the same, me and El. You’re going to reach out to her more because she’s your girlfriend.”

“No,” Mike said, shaking his head. “Friends don’t move down- friends are important. El and I might be dating but that doesn’t make you or Dustin or Lucas any less important. You all are my best friends.”

Will’s insides twisted funnily.

“And besides, I stopped writing because I never knew what to say.” Mike shook his head. “I’d want to tell you about the day or the campaign or the fight I had with my dad, and it never came out right on paper. I wanted to call, and then I would just get caught up just… wishing you were here. But you weren’t. I missed you a lot.”

Will looked out at the desert. El was standing now, a can feebly rolling forward in front of her in jerks.

“I missed you too.

🕓

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Steve Harrington 

“We need to clear everybody out of the area,” Nancy said.

They had cleared out of the hospital about an hour ago, the trunk of his car stuffed to the brim with their spoils. They had spent the last half hour getting everyone up to speed,

“Look, I know I’m new here, but everybody in town knows who we are. No one’s going to listen to a bunch of teenagers, especially me, the town-fucking-pariah,” Eddie said,

“Then we don’t look like a bunch of kids. We tell them there’s a gas leak,” Nancy said, eyes sparking to life. “People hear about those all the time on the news. We clear them out of the next section. Ask everybody if they have been experiencing any of the symptoms on Max’s guidance counselor’s list and we keep an eye on them.”

“What if he doesn’t care about going in order?” Lucas pointed out.

“Let’s hope he does,” Robin said. “He chose a clock for a reason. This is our best bet to stop, or at least delay him. We need to seal the rift. Vecna’s the one who’s opening it this time. The mind flayer never tried to reach thought until Henry did it first.”

“We have to expand the perimeter,” Dustin said.

“And what? Say the gas leak was contagious?” Steve asked, incredulous. “People here aren’t going to believe it.”

“With everything that’s happened here, they might,” Robin muttered.

“We’ll just say we can’t pinpoint where the leak came from, that the explosion at the Starcourt caused unprecedented damage to the gas line,” Max said.

Nancy nodded. “I’ll write up a letter, drop it off at the newspaper.” She walked over to the kitchen rustling through the stack of bills on the counter until she found the one she was looking for. “I’ve spent the last four years working on layouts and templates with the paper- I can replicate anything.” She ripped open the letter and showed it to them. “Think they’ll believe a letter from the gas company?” she asked with a devious half smirk.

A laugh ripped through Steve and he hugged her, lifting her off the ground as they spun until she was laughing too. “Nance, you’re a genius!” he exclaimed, finally setting her back on the ground. She flushed with mirth Dustin sent Steve a significant look that he pointedly ignored.

🕓

???, ???, 1986

Mike Wheeler 

Mike never thought he would miss Indiana. It was always cold there, but summer there always felt a level of cold after 1983. Indiana had rain and snow and forests as far as the eye could see. He wasn't even in California long enough to really miss Hawkins, but now his body was calling him back anxiously.

Now he watched as the desert turned into something endless, the states bleeding together seamlessly on their way back home.

“-red over. Code-”

“Wait,” Mike called out, “stop the car.”

Jonathan veered off into the nearest arm of the road and Mike was shoving the door open before it had completely come to a stop, barreling out the car,

“Mike?” Joyce called after him, shifting the U-Haul into park just as suddenly. “Where are you going?”

He walked towards the edge of the canyon and held it up over that. “I heard something,” he said. He extended the antenna

“Code red over.”

“Dustin.” He clicked down the receiver. “Dustin this is Mike, over.”

“Mike is that really you? Thank fuck we have been trying to reach you for days, over.”

“We’re on the road. We’re not at the Byers anymore. Over”

“What do you mean you’re not at the Byer’s? Where are you?” he shouted back, incredulous.

“We're somewhere in Nevada. Or Arizona. It’s been a long couple of days. We’re heading back to Hawkins. Over.”

The radio went silent for a minute and Mike could almost imagine it, Dustin and Lucas hunched over the radio, arguing what to even say about that when the radio crackled back to life.

“It’s the Upside Down, over,” Dustin said instead, and all of them stilled, even Ms. Byers and Hopper who were standing on the outskirts of their group.

“What? Over.” Will croaked over the walkie. Mike hadn’t even noticed him take it out of his hand.

El frowned. “Owens said that something was happening, he didn’t say what it was. It can’t-”

“We’ve already closed the gate and then we dealt with the mess left over last summer,” Jonathan said, but even he looked skeptical. “There can’t be anything left.”

“There’s always something,” Will said and even though his voice was fairly even-keel Mike could hear the beginnings of hysteria. Will was usually good at keeping himself contained, shoving it all back down. He had always been disturbingly good at it. It had taken Mike years of friendship with him to realize that he did that, hid everything away so that he wouldn’t worry anyone else or make them upset. He never wanted to make anyone upset.

But this was just too much. There was only so much one person could take. And as far as Mike was concerned, El and Will were both at the end of those ropes.

“It’s this guy-” Lucas started

“We’re calling him Vecna-” Dustin cut in.

“Like the campaign? Over,” Mike managed to cut in, incredulous, but really, why should he be?

“Yes, like the campaign. He’s been putting people in a trance and then throwing them up in the sky and twisting them up like pretzels and then breaking all their bones. And he’s got this creepy clock motif,” Dustin said.

Everyone’s skin turned a sickly shade of pale

“He’s gotten three people so far,” Lucas said, and he must have taken the receiver away from Dustin. “He almost got Max.”

El snatched the walkie out of Will’s hand and pressed down on the call. “Is she okay?”

There was a crackle of static and then a pause.

“I’m here El, over,” Max’s voice crackled through. She sounded weary and exhausted but definitely alive.

El gasped out a sob of relief,  took a deep breath and pushed the button down. “I’m glad.”

“You guys have to keep the walkie on, you have to stay in range,” Dustin demanded, but Mike could hear how freaked out he was.

“We should be leaving Nevada soon, over,” he said, looking over the map that Jonathan had spread out over the back of the car

“The gates have been ripping through,” Dustin said.

The news hit like a stone in a pond- cold, hard, and leaving waves rippling through.

Gates, he had said. Gates as in plural. Ripping through.

“What?” he said and the space around them was silent. “Over,” he added, belated.

They were all out of the car by now- Mike didn’t know when that had happened but they were all listening to the radio. They had heard there was something in Hawkins but this-

“But it is closed. We closed it,” El said.

“Someone’s trying to open it from the other side,” Dustin said. “Whoever it is is possessing people and killing them.”

Mike felt something inside him go cold.

“Wait” – Lucas again- “I thought I heard. What are you doing in Nevada. Over.”

Ms. Byers took hold of the walkie and Will pointed where to push.

“Well, we’re kind of moving back to Hawkins,” she said Over Will mouthed, “Over.”

“Ms. Byers? Over.”

“Hi, honey, yeah. Lenora isn’t really working out right now,” she said, eyeing Hopper who was all but leaning on her right now.

Jonathan took it from her. “We should start to see some more populated areas soon, it’ll be easier to talk. But it looks like we’re still a few days out. Over.”

“Okay, we’ll keep the line open.” Dustin said. “Good luck. Over.”

“Stay safe,” Jonathan said back. “Over,” and the line went silent.

“Will,” he started but Will just shook his head and Mike was reminded, viscerally, of last summer, how he had shut it all down back then too. 

“I’m fine. We need to get back,” Will said, a steely glint in his eyes.

Mike nodded, because what else were they to do? Will wouldn’t leave his friends even if the thing that had been haunting him for the last four years was still alive.

🕓

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Karen Wheeler

It only took until 2 o’clock for Karen to cave and call the Sinclairs and Claudia over.

Karen didn’t know what was going on, but she had gotten a call from Mike that apparently the Byers had picked up and were moving back to Hawkins. She had called up the Sinclairs and Claudia as soon as she got off the phone and they were just as baffled as she was.

Things were getting crazy in town, to the point where it was borderline unmanageable. There had been Will’s disappearance a few years back and then that weird virus that killed the crops in half of Hawkins and the mall blowing up last year, not to mention all those weird stories about chemical leaks from the lab. That had caused quite the scandal, but this was different.

Because now three kids were dead- the cheerleader, that small boy that followed Nancy around like she was the queen of the newspaper, hanging on her every word, and that kid from Lucas’ basketball team.

“That is two people linked to the basketball team,” Sue fretted.

“Did he know Chrissy?”

“He never really mentioned her all that much but he knew her. I would say he’s safe because they hang out in different social circles but-” she shook her head. “But I don’t think that even matters because that other boy…”

“Fred,” Karen supplied and she frowned, nodding. “But now Joyce and the kids are coming back?” That had been the one good thing to come out of this- at least one of her kids was nowhere near all of this. But this was insane.

“Joyce has always been a little… odd,” Claudia said carefully, but she didn’t need to- they had known her for ten years. Odd was a nicer way to say eccentric, but even this was beyond that. Last year she had moved the kids after the school year so they could finish up. She hadn’t really uprooted them, not as bad as it could have been. But to move them now? Right at spring break and when there were only about two months left in the school year made absolutely no sense. And it didn’t make sense to move when they had Mike- a whole other kid- to move with them.

They were at a loss for words, her glazed lemon bread shining prettily under the fluorescent lights.

“And you’ve seen Jason,” Charles said with a worried knit to his bow. And Karen nodded. It had been hard to miss him. She had seen him at the store murmuring all sorts of nonsense about DnD and the devil to anyone who would listen, and then he and some of the team had been sweeping through the neighborhood on their bikes, like hawks, like they were looking for something.

The door opened and she got up to see her daughter speeding through. Nancy had been acting weird too. It was spring break, she knew, but Nancy was keeping odd hours, and Karen didn’t like that someone so close to her daughter had died again. She never was quite the same after Barb died.

“Nancy,” she caught her by the wrist. “Did you hear Mike is coming back early?” her brows pinched. She didn’t know why she was asking but maybe she knew more. Nancy and Mike weren't exactly close, but maybe Jonathan said something. He would likely know more than the kids.

Her face went carefully blank and Karen got that feeling again that Nancy wasn’t telling her something. From the glances she caught of Sue and Claudia and they could see it too.

“I spoke with Jonathan.”

“On the phone?” she asked, incredulous. Surely she would have noticed that, what with the way Nancy and Jonathan’s conversations could go on for hours.

“No, on the radio.”

“What radio?”

“Dustin’s.”

Karen started, then shook her head. “Those radios don’t have a large range,” she said, looking to the other parents for confirmation and they nodded.

Nancy gave a meaningful look to Claudia. “Cerebro.”

Her eyes widened. “Dustin knows.”

And this- this was all too weird. First people were going around saying that DnD- a game their kids had been playing since they were in elementary school- was corrupting kids and turning them into demons or whatever Jason Carver in his grief-addled mind said. Now she was finding out that Dustin had a super radio- which she vaguely remembered Claudia mentioning, but that was a year ago- and they were using it to keep track of her son and the Byers as they trekked across the country?

The kids had been coming in and out of the house too- not just Mike's friends, but Nancy too. Something was making them act all together and it made her nervous

🕓

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Steve Harrington 

Steve and Nancy were tasked with staking out the latest rift.

Dustin wanted to know more about it and everyone had agreed. Eddie had gone off with the kids to get supplies, since his car was bigger, while Steve and Nancy drove all over town to see which rift would be best. He was ignoring the pointed look Dustin had given him and Nancy before they left.

Eddie’s place was still covered in police tape and swarming with nosy neighbors. Fred’s rift was slightly better, but the police were still monitoring it periodically, and it was in the middle of the road so someone could come upon it at any time.

The lake, however, was free. Since Patrick had died in the middle of it, it wasn’t like they could exactly tape off the scene.

He felt a pang at the thought of his death. They had played together briefly- he had been a freshman Steve’s senior year and with Billy on the team, he had tried not to draw too much attention.

“So,” Nancy’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts.

“Yeah?”

 “You and Robin,” she said.

“It's not like that,” he said, shaking his head.

“It’s not?” she asked.

“Don’t you get tired of people asking that about you and I?”

“So it’s the same, you and her.”

“No,” he shook his head. “I don’t know what it is Nancy. It’s different but I don’t have the words for it. You were always the one that was good with words.”

“Yeah,” she smiled, soft and gentle, almost shy. “Did you use to like her?”

“I don’t know. Henderson got into my head telling me that I must like her, because we get along. So I asked her out and she said no. But I wasn’t even really upset about it, you know? Maybe because what I felt for her wasn’t really… romantic. I guess I’m just tired of people telling me how I’m supposed to feel, or telling me that I don’t understand what it is.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, looking awfully guilty.

“It’s not you Nancy. It just happens. Eddie told me that you loved me because you're willing to hang out with me, and Robin says the same stuff too and don’t know what to say to that. It’s not like being in a relationship is the only way I can be happy.”

“I do love you. I mean I-” She started and he shook his head.

“I know you didn’t mean it like that. I know that. They don’t know that’s just what we’re like after what happened after the Byers’ in ‘83.”

She shook her head. “It feels like a long time ago.”

“Yeah I feel like I wasn’t really living until then. Like everything else was so damn stupid until that night.”

“We were never able to talk about it. Not really.”

“No,” he said. “But you had Jonathan and I have Robin. And now we finally can talk to each other.”

She smiled, nodding.

“She sounds like a soulmate,” she said after a moment

“Yeah,” he said softly.

“And I think that anyone would be lucky to have something like that. It doesn’t happen all the time.”

“You, Nancy Wheeler, a believer in soulmates. Never took you for a romantic.”

“Well, with all the other things we found out is real, it would be nice for one good thing to be real too.”

He smiled, walking beside her.

“But the assumptions- I am sorry for that,” Nancy said and she huffed. “I guess I never told you, but I hated all of those things. The assumptions. The ones placed on me. Of being some perfect housewife.”

“I can’t imagine it.”

She smirked. “I can’t either. But I used to and it was a nightmare. I guess I just forgot there are other assumptions we can make. I guess I just assumed with you too.”

He shrugged. “I guess I still do the whole ladies-man thing. I took some girl to the basketball game, but I can’t tell you how relieved I am that it fell apart and turned into nothing. I like being single,” He laughed like he almost couldn’t believe it himself.

“Maybe I’m projecting, too,” she said after a moment. “I’ve been thinking a lot about relationships lately. I always thought Jonathan was the one for me- still do, but lately he’s been distant.”

Steve leaned back against a picnic table at the edge of the lake and gave her a look. “Nancy, you need to talk to Jonathan about all of this, not me.”

She shook her head. “You’re right.” The silence fell over them contemplative and mournful as they looked across at the crime scene tape. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine,” he said.

“No,” she shook her head again. “I’m sorry for two years ago and breaking up like that. I was still so upset about Barb and I was so mad you weren’t dealing with it the same way. I thought you were trying to pretend it didn’t happen, but you weren’t, because you were right down there with the kids.”

Steve was silent a moment. “It’s different, when you’re actually in it. Whenever you talked about Barb I could feel the weight of it. I wasn’t ready for that.” He looked down the bench at her. “Back then it didn’t affect me the same. I mean, I fought the Demogorgon but that was one night, I wasn’t living with it, not the way you were, or Jonathan was.”

She laughed a little, humorless thing. “Now we can’t seem to be free of this.”

“No,” he said, eyes already a distant thing, turning to look back out at the murder site in front of them, “no we can’t.”

🕓

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

They waited for night to fall before they took a bat out on the lake. Eddie, Robin, Steve, and herself had all boarded, leaving Max, Dustin, and Lucas on shore.

The gate was there, in the pitch black. The sky was dark with impending rain, and even though the air was warmer now, it didn’t feel all that different from that November night, three years ago.

Maybe it was the lake, the wet coldness that hovered even above its surface. It was an odd thing to remember, especially on a night where she didn’t think there would be anything worth remembering at all. 

She had taken out the trash the night before, had been thinking about kissing Steve Harrington, the out-of-her-league popular boy. But she could feel the chill now, and even though the lake stretched out for miles all around them, when she looked down, it felt hollow, an abyss in the middle of nowhere, like the bottom of the Harrington’s empty swimming pool.

The surface of the lake was like a black mirror, reminiscent of how El described the mindscape. Nancy had never really understood it, how everything could be so empty. Now she was starting to get an idea.

“There,” Robin pointed and Nancy carefully moved to that side of the boat. The boat was already above capacity and they were pushing their luck. If they moved too much they would capsize this thing.

Her eyes went down, down, down through the water and she could see, just barely, a familiar shade of red light crackling through the basin at the base of the lake, taunting and distorted under the water, like the lights at the bottom of a swimming pool.

“We need to see what’s down there,” she said.

Eddie made a noise that meant a hybrid of are you crazy? and yeah. In any other context it would be crazy, but she was so immersed in this in-between world they were living in that it didn’t even register anymore.

“I’ll go.”

She looked back. Steve was already standing, careful not to rock it too much.

They all just stared at him.

He huffed. “If one of you is a stronger swimmer, feel free to share with the class.”

Robin held up her hands in acquiesce. “I’m not that good at swimming, so fine by me.”

Steve was half out of his shirt, stopping to look at her incredulously. “Robin, you got on a boat. In the middle of a murder lake. Why the hell would you get on a boat above a portal to another dimension or whatever if you can’t swim-”

“I didn’t say I couldn’t swim, just that I can’t swim very well-”

“Batshit thing to say.” He shook his head, turning to Nancy, hand out, imploring. “You’re hearing this right? Nance, tell her she’s crazy.”

Nancy, for her part was staring in disbelief. “Really Robin?”

“I told you, I’m not coordinated. That translates to swimming.”

“You understand that’s worse right?” Nancy asked faintly. She distantly couldn’t help but wish Johnathan was here. Another level head.

“Munson, you swim?” Steve asked urgently.

“Yes.”

“Thank the good Lord.” And then without ceremony he tossed his shirt on the boat and jumped in.

There was a splash that was muffled by the tension, the ripples echoing out until there were none left. He disappeared down into the inky black and her worry surged through her with thoughts of him slipping, slipping, slipping down- 

She shook her head. Steve was fine. He was on the swim team, he was a lifeguard, she even remembered him mentioning he took a class on how to get out of rip tides. If nature itself couldn’t pull him in and drown him, he could do this, easily.

Nothing to worry about.

They waited with baited breath and she belatedly wished she had brought a stopwatch or asked him how long he could hold his breath because this felt too long, but then her watch hadn’t even ticked to a minute, from what she could make out in the dark.

Steve burst up through the surface with a gasp. She startled. She hadn’t even seen him coming up.

“I saw it,” he gasped. He swam over and made to hold onto the boat, but opted to tread water, likely worried about tipping them all over. “The thing’s not that long, maybe five- six feet. Foot or two wide. The thing looks like it's tearing. Theres this weird barrier over it, like the meniscus membrane thing with water.”

She laughed. “You remember that?” she said, her head a little light.

“I told you I’d help you study,” he said with a cheeky grin, “didn’t mean to actually learn anything though. Guess you were a good influence Wheeler,” he said with a half-smile.

Eddie looked between the two of them. “You two studied together?”

“It’s sort of an inside joke,” she said. “One of our first dates was Steve insisting he would help me study for a test. We studied a bit more than I thought, but not all that much,” she said and her tone was fond. “It had all been so much simpler back then.”

“Honestly, I would take a date like that even without the making out part. Highschool is kicking my ass. For the third time.”

“Nancy is a super nerd. She could help you. I mean, not to volunteer.”

“No, really, you’re having trouble? What class?”

“Ms. O’Donnell.”

Nancy smiles. “Ah. I understand it all now. I was lucky to avoid that. Journalism period was at the same time she taught senior English.”

She opened her mouth to ask something else, she wasn’t even sure what-

“Steve!” Eddie screamed as Steve was yanked down into the darkness and Nancy saw the tentacles or vines or whatever the fuck they were, grab him by the middle and pull him down.

“He can’t stay down there,” she said, desperate. There was a debate over whether or not people could breathe the air in the upside-down, but all she knew was that Will had survived, but not without the Mind Flayer lodging itself down his throat, no doubt though those particles Joyce always talked about when she walked through the entrance to the Upside Down with Hopper.

She yanked off her shoes without a second thought and then she hurled herself over the edge, the faint sound of someone calling her name before she plunged beneath the surface.

🕓

???, Colorado, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan saw Will sitting alone in the kitchen of the Surfer Boy by himself.

They were running low on their food, so Argyle suggested they stop at a Surfer Boy before they left the range of the chain and everyone had agreed. El and Mike were joking at the table about pineapple on pizza with Argyle while his mom and Hopper were hunched together in one of the booths whispering together. Murray was in his own space, tinkering with his computer.

And Jonathan felt adrift. So he went where he knew he needed to go.

“Hey,” he said.

Will looked up from his pizza and offered him a smile. “Hey.”

“How are you feeling about all of this?”

He shrugged. “As good as I can, I guess,” he looked distant. “I thought maybe Lenora would be better, and it was in some ways. The bullying stopped but… I still felt it.”

“What?” he asked but Will stayed silent.

“You know,” he said after a moment, “sometimes it doesn’t matter, if we’re with the right people. People who love us even if we are different.”

He looked at Will and saw Will looking at him.

“I know I wasn’t always there, but me, Mom, we love you. No matter what.’

“Even if I’m different. Even if,” he hesitated. “It’s something that won’t go away?”

“Yes,” Jonathan said, and he hoped Will believed him.

🕓

Upside Down, 1983

Steve Harrington 

Steve was thrown out by the vine onto the ground. He rolled on the dry dirt, disoriented, somehow having turned all the way around and not at the same time. He gasped for breath, but he could barely make two consecutive breaths without feeling like something was flying into his mouth, like dust or a gnat or something.

A screech cried out above him and his head shot up to see what it was, and he was almost tackled to the ground by a monster. He had never seen anything like this before, he thought briefly, before immediately remembering that that really didn’t matter right now. And then it came at him again.

He felt searing pain as its talons tore through his skin before its tail wrapped around his neck, choking him. He tried to dig his fingers underneath it to try and make some space, but it wouldn’t budge and he was suffocating. His vision was starting to black out and he couldn’t breathe.

There was a thunk and Steve jerked to the side with the thing's body. He pried his eyes open to see Nancy and Robin there hitting the bat with an oar with Eddie standing there behind them, scrappy and not exactly sure what he was supposed to do, but swinging too. Steve wondered briefly if that was what he looked like the first time he faced one of those Upside Down things.

Oxygen, or at least some cheap imitation of it started cycling through his blood again and he felt heady with it, both from the deprivation of air and the surge of adrenaline that had been injected into his bloodstream the moment that thing had dragged him through another portal.

There was nothing around him and he wished desperately- almost wistfully, if such a thing could be accomplished in such a dire situation- for his nail bat. He was never going to leave it in the car again.

The car-

“Robin! Do you still have the radio,” he yelled, dodging out of the way of one of the bats.

“Yeah “she said, “but I don’t think it’s going to be much help right now.”

“The kids have the transistor in the car,” he called. “It’s supposed to be super powerful or whatever. Dustin said it works to Australia.”

“Uh, I’m not sure how interdimensional travel works, but we might be out of range.”

“It might,” Nancy said, joining the conversation, smacking a bat out of the sky. “Jonathan told me that Will tried to call Mrs. Byers on the phone. We can reach out. We can’t do it too long at a time, it will take a while. Will burned out so many of Joyce’s phones.

“Well, that’s great and all but I can’t really sit down and work on that right now,” Robin screamed over the shrieking bat, swinging the oar wildly and missing.

Steve grabbed one and ripped the throat out of it with his teeth, the blood dripping down his mouth

“The boat,” Eddie said. “There should be one somewhere near here, if the oars are.”

“There,” Nancy said and then ran over to it, all of the following closely behind, down under the overturned boat.

Steve’s side was aching with pain.

“We shouldn’t be breathing this,” Nancy said and she ripped off strips of her skirt to cover their mouths, he almost forgot about that, but he remembered doing that in the tunnel, and there it had been dense with those particle things, but here it was thick with it.

“We don’t know what kinds of diseases or possession- wait Steve, did you bite one? The blood is probably all in your mouth.”

“What kind of shit do you think are it its claws?” he laughed weakly, lifting his arm to show off the slashes on his abdomen, the blood already starting to pool and congeal.

“Shit.”

“How are we going to get out of here?” Eddie asked. “Even if we could somehow get back up to the rift, that thing pulled you down. It could pull you back.”

Steve shook his head. He couldn’t do it again, holding his breath was what did him in the first time, it was that second of hesitation, disorientation, that had given the bats the advantage. They didn’t have that.

The bats were scraping at the top of the boat and they were all lying basically on top of each other to fit. He wondered how much time they would have to breathe here.

“I don’t want to be negative here,” Robin said slowly, “but I think we’re going to die.”

“We're not going to die,” Nancy said in an irritated tone, switching on her flashlight. Eddie was sitting hunched over under the base of the boat, worriedly staring at the seam where the edge of the boat met the silt or demon dust or whatever this was. Steve just leaned back as much as he could and tried to block out the pain that was starting to shoot though his body.

He watched idly as Robin fiddled with the radio, and then the light clicked on to his relief.

“The radio is working,” Robin said, relieved. “I guess Dustin wasn’t joking about these being military-grade.”

“Dustin wouldn’t joke about that,” he and Nancy said together.

“Jinx,” she said. “You owe me a soda.”

“Sure, as soon as we get out of this hellhole.”

“Hello, this is Robin, over.”

“Robin? Are you able to talk? Over.”

“We can talk. Hey kids. Over,” Steve said relieved.

“Are you all okay over there? Over,” Lucas demanded concern heavy in his voice.

“We’re fine kid. Not crazy about the change of scenery. We have to get out of here. Sooner the better, over.”

“Where did you guys go?” Max’s voice came through now. “We were watching and we saw Steve dive in, next thing we know all of you are gone.”

“One of the vines pulled Steve in through the gate. Over.”

“What? Over” Lucas asked and in the background he could hear Dustin saying shit before the radio clicked.

“We’re okay, but we can’t come out the way we came in. Over.”

“That’s a given,” Dustin cut in. “Over.”

“How are we able to speak to you?”

“Maybe,” Robin said thoughtfully, “you said that at Ms. Byers’ it shorted out. I remember what Steve told me about the, you know, about the lights. It sounds like it could move through electrical currents or whatever, it shorted out because it was a power surge. We’re using batteries tight now. They don’t surge. Over.”

Nancy pulled away from where she had been peering through the hole. “We need to get somewhere safe,” Nancy said.

Steve lifted himself up to grin at her, but his arm almost gave out as pain shot up his side. He didn’t want to worry any of them but the pain was getting worse in his side.

“Nancy?” Dustin called over the radio. She snatched it up.

“Yes?”

“If you can’t leave through that rift, try to make it to the one on the road.”

“Yeah” they heard Lucas cut in. “It should be north of you… or south. Does it work the same in the Upside Down? Are directions like a mirror?”

“No, wait that’s an interesting question. Can you check-” the radio staticked out and Steve grabbed it and pressed down to speak.

“Are you serious Henderson? We almost got eaten alive by demobats or whatever. Over.”

Dustin gave an exasperated sign and Steve could see the eye roll. “It’s for science Steve. Over.”

“You’re insane,” he muttered but he fished the compass out of his back pocket. “We’ll check it. But just because we’re here. Over.”

“Don’t mess it up. We need accurate data. When’s going to be the next time we're down there? Over.”

“Uh, hopefully never,” Eddie’s voice raising in pitch. Steve leaned forward to say something but Robin cut him off.

“I’ll help. We’ll get everything and then we’ll meet you there. I’ll make sure Steve does it right. Over.”

He snorted. “Rude,” he muttered, but Robin just sent him a challenging look, but he wasn’t out of it enough to miss the concern that flashed through her eyes or the way they dipped down to the bleeding wound in his stomach. He grunted and nodded.

“Okay,” Nancy nodded. “We’ll get over there as fast as we can.”

“I’ll drive. Over,” Max spoke up, and he could hear the devious little grin in her voice

“Max,” He grabbed the walkie, struggled upright, “I swear if you hurt my car-”

“I’ll be real sweet with her Harrington. Party over and out.”

He shook his head. “Those kids will be the death of me.”

Eddie, who had been pressed against the edge of the boat, rolled back to them. The scratching overhead had let up and the bats didn’t sound as close, but Steve wouldn’t bet on them being out of the woods, not when he knew how fast they could swoop in.

“Theres the same gas station on the edge of the lake,” he said. “It’s not close, but it’s maybe three hundred yards? If we sprint we might make it.”

Nancy’s face was grim but she didn’t dispute it.

“Can you see where they are?” she asked.

He peered out again. “They’re above. Circling.”

She shook her head. “We have to try.” Determination glinted in her eyes

“Fast and quick,” Robin confirmed with a shaky breath. “They’re bats, so their primary sense is probably sound, not sight.” They all nodded.

Steve could feel his heartbeat pound in his chest.

They all left, one after the other and they kept low, their feet a whisper against the silt.

They powered their way there and Steve could make it because he had spent the past however many years either getting the shit kicked out of him and/or playing competitive sports, so he knew how to function through the pain even though each inch forward felt like he was re-tearing the wound over and over. He couldn’t even guarantee that it wasn’t getting worse, but he shoved it down and kept going. If they didn’t get out of here, it wouldn’t matter how careful he had been.

They made it to the shop. There was a small opening they managed to squeeze though, but there weren’t too many vines out here.

“Theres not too many vines here,” Nancy observed

“Theres probably more when you get closer to the,” he waved vaguely the hub. “That’s what it was like in the tunnels,” he said, clutching his side. Nancy looked at him concerned.

“Is everyone okay?” she asked, bossy older sister mode kicking in and he half smiled.

“I’m fine,” Eddie said, eyes wide, like a deer caught in the headlights. She looked at Robin and she nodded.

“I’m fine, I’m fine.”

Nancy turned to him. “Steve, move your hands.”

He knew there was no point in fighting it, so he moved them. The blood had already become tacky and it hurt to remove them. She tried to wipe away the dirt and he hissed as fresh blood broke through and the bleeding stared all over again.

Robin looked like she was going to be sick. “Steve-”

“We just need to wrap it,” he said looking at Nancy. She wouldn’t shy away from this. She never did.

He watched as her jaw set in that determined way that made him fall in love with her all those years ago, but now it was something he could count on.

She tore off the bottom of her skirt and wrapped it around and yanked it tight. He grunted and the sound was almost enough to make her hesitate, but he just braced his hands on the table and she pulled harder and tied it tight.

“Do you think they’ll forget we're here?”

Steve shrugged, his forehead was sweating profusely.

“Steve,” Nancy said concerned, that little worried frown pinching her face. “Steve are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” he said, resting his hand on the shelf and then almost losing his legs.

“Shit,” Eddie muttered, looking out the window, across the store, anywhere but him and his gaping, bloody wound.

“There’s a car out there,” he said after a moment, “in the parking lot. I can hotwire it. It will at least give us cover.”

He nodded. “Sounds good to me.” 

Nancy grabbed some of the newspaper and pressed it over where the soaked-through fabric was.

Robin caught her wrist, pulling the cover off.

“This says its from November 6^th 1983,” Robin said slowly

“The day Will disappeared,” Nancy said. But they all knew that, because all of them, even if they all hadn’t known him, knew about that.

He was feeling delirious. He could tell because one moment he was trying not to melt onto the linoleum floor and the next he was in the car.

Eddie was driving the truck, Nancy reading off the directions on the map, while Robin sat beside her, the compass firmly in her other hand as she periodically made notations about direction with a pencil.

Steve was- he was fading fast. It scared him, how he knew that. He had had the shit beaten out of him before, but this was completely different. He was losing too much blood and he could feel that it was becoming harder to breathe.

“Steve?” Robin asked. “Hey Steve, are you okay?”

He nodded silently, up and down probably faster than would indicate he was handling this as fine as he claimed. Or maybe slower. It was kind of hard to gauge anything right now.

“Steve,” Robins said and then she was leaning into his space putting her hand on his face, like she was trying to take his temperature or something. Her hand was cool and felt nice against his skin.

“What’s going on back there?” Eddie called, glancing back quickly.

“Steve-” Nancy started, that worried look on her face.

“I’m fine. You guys just keep taking notes. Henderson will be pissed if you don’t take them.”

“Steve-”

“Seriously,” he slurred, and there was something heavy in the air between all of them. The truth that if he was going to die in the car, there was nothing they could do to stop it. The only thing they could do was keep driving and hope they could outrun the demobats.

“They keep following us,” Eddie said.

“Aren’t bats, like, blind?” Steve mumbled. “They use echolocation and shit.”

“Yeah, so?”

“You’re diving a truck in a place that is dead silent all the time. It’s not hard to find us and follow us,” he closed his eyes, willing the pain to go away.

He could feel their eyes on him. “What?” he he challenged. “I know some stuff. I’m not completely stupid,” he said as he sunk further down in the seat.

“Hey Steve, we’re going to stay awake, yeah?” Robin said. “I’ll uh, I’ll tell you the plot from one of the movies from the video store. Maybe.”

“If you say the one I’m thinking of, I’m definitely going to fall asleep.”

She snorted. “Okay. What movies do you like?”

“I like…” he paused, mulling it over. “I like Footloose.”

“Footloose,” Eddie scoffed. “Basic, Harrington.”

He flipped him off. “I like the dancing. And that scene with the cars-”

Eddie hummed. “Okay, I’ll give you that. It's fun, even if I didn’t take you for the musical type.”

“I’m not. Usually.” He frowned. “It’s not a musical. Robin, Robin,” he tugged on her sleeve. “Is Footloose a musical?”

She shook her head. “There’s no singing. It’s not a musical.”

“Nancy?”

“It’s not a musical,” she said, amused

“Then shut the fuck up Munson,” Steve sniped.

“Really Wheeler, you’re going to leave me out in the cold on this one? There are extended musical scenes with dancing. If the movie focuses on the music, then it is a musical.”

“Not all of them- singing is what makes it a musical.”

“Then what is a movie that’s about dancing all the time?”

“Footloose,” Steve said with a wicked smile

“We’re coming up on it,” Nancy said. Steve cracked his eyes open and Eddie grinned ferally, eyes on the road.

“I see it up ahead.”

Nancy grabbed the walkie. “We’re almost there, are you in position? Over.”

“We’re almost there.”

Eddie grabbed the walkie. “How are you not there yet? You left before us.”

“Sorry, not all of us drive!” Dustin yelled back.

Nancy looked out the window. “We can’t stop,” she worried. “They’ll be on us if we wait.”

“I’ve got this Wheeler,” Eddie said. He stepped on the gas, barreling past the red, glowing rift. He leaned over the walkie. “Signal us when you’re there.”

Steve watched out the back window as the gate got further and further away. How far were the kids? He wasn’t sure how much longer he could-

“Now,” someone screamed over the walkie and Eddie slammed on the brakes, flinging the car around the opposite direction.

Steve craned to look out the window and all the bats were in a little flurry trying to figure out what was going on. It would buy them a few seconds. Eddie threw on the parking break and the car skidded to a stop a few mere feet from the rift.

“Everybody out,” he yelled and they were shoving the doors open and then sprinting for the tear. They shoved Steve through first and he went through rolling on the ground as he surfaced on the other side. There was no hesitation before Robin, Nancy and Eddie came through too

The kids on them in an instant, pulling them out and then they threw the tarp over the hole.

They stood, silently outside, no sound but their heavy breathing as the waited

“They’re not coming through,” Nancy said, relieved.

“Blind as a bat,” Eddie said with a weary smirk, “they can’t hear though this.”

“What’s not coming through?” Lucas, asked, eyes wide.

“Big bats. In the air.”

“Might have something to do with the size too,” Dustin said. “These guys are small right?”

“The gate stuff must dampen everything out.”

Robin nodded. “I couldn’t tell at first, because we were underwater, but it sounds like that.”

“The portal that was there when the demodogs and the Demogorgon came though was huge. This is so small. Plus, they can’t see, if they’re like actual bats.”

Dustin frowned. “So they really are like bats. Interesting.”

“If it helps they don’t really look like- agh,’ he groaned, doubling over.

“Steve?” Dustin asked slowly, what is that”

“I'm fine,” he said. “I just need to patch this-” he wretched to the side throwing up all over the road.

“Shit, shit, shit. Max!” Dustin called, running his hands through his hair.

“You got that car ready to go Mayfield?” Eddie asked.

“No, no, no,” Steve said, dizzy and disoriented. “I’m not driving with her again”

She revved the car.

🕓

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

Nancy wasn't sure how they made it back. They snuck Steve down to the basement and grabbed all the first aid stuff she could find. She cleaned out the winds as best she could and wrapped him up tight to stop the bleeding. Steve was asleep now, but as long as he didn't move, it should be fine.

“So what do we know,” Nancy said. It was nearing midnight again, but they were all awake- too awake for the hour. She had managed to find an old posterboard from an old project and had flipped it over to use as a makeshift board. Thier notes from the night before were already transferred over.

“He’s not going to stop,” Max said

Dustin shook his head.

“No matter what we do, it won’t matter because someone, something on the other side will reach back through.”

“Not unless we stop them,” Nancy said.

“Nancy, what?”

“They’re a hive, right? Strike the core, Vecna, they all die,” she looked up and met them all in the eye. “We have to destroy the Upside Down.”

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

Nancy walked into the familiar news office where she had spent all last summer working. Despite how much had happened in town- what with everything that happened at Starcourt- the office was almost disturbingly unchanged.

The front desk was still empty because they still refused to hire someone full-time to work, leaving the mail to pile up on the front counter where the mailman dropped it off. She didn’t want to jinx it, but she hadn’t thought it would be this easy.

She snuck the letter she made that morning out of her bag, sticking it in the stack. No, the middle was too far down. It needed to be at the top, she pulled it out of the pile and moved to set it on top.

“Snooping Wheeler,” she heard and she whipped around to see a familiar reporter. He snatched the letter out of her hands, the red word URGENT really standing out against the cream envelope. “You know opening someone else’s mail is a federal offence.”

“I didn’t open it,” she said, laying the bait. He was always overeager for a story. He wouldn’t be able to resist a lead if he knew someone else wanted it for themselves. “It was already open.”

“Sure Wheeler,” he said, rolling his eyes. “And I know you’re going to fight me tooth and nail saying I don’t have any evidence if I call the police department on you, so you can just leave.”

She gave him the dirtiest look she could muster, before she turned and walked out the door, not allowing the smile to spread across her face until she was in her car.

Hook, line, and sinker.

They got them.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Chief Calvin Powell

Chief Powell was already having the worst day.

A fourth body had been called in in the early hours of the morning, before the sun had even rose. It was a older woman who had only been discovered because her neighbor had taken to bringing her paper up the drive to her every morning and had panicked when no one had answered.

His wife was growing worried, not just for the town but for him as well and he wanted to do something to assuage her worry, but he didn’t know if anything could right now.

Deputy Callahan was flitting around nervously, already pouring himself his nth cup of coffee in so many hours and it was to the point where Chief Powell wasn’t sure when the man would be able to sleep again.

The phone rang again and buried his face in his hands as he reached for the receiver.

“Chief Powell.”

“Hello Chief,” he heard and… he knew that voice.

“Nancy Wheeler.”

“Yes,” she said. “You’re likely going to get a call soon from the paper, maybe not, about a gas leak in town.”

And the thing was, he knew it was a lie. Maybe the rest of the town would believe it, especially after Starcourt, but he could feel this was a ruse.

But he also knew more was going on than he knew, and he had a feeling she knew what it was.

“Oh, and I’m going to believe that?” he said, because he was going to leverage for an advantage. He had to. “This town is in danger, Nancy, and we need to do something to help.”

“If you want to do something, please, just evacuate the town. Trust me on that.” There was a small pause. “We might have a solution, but we’re going to act today and we need a clear shot. Then we’ll tell you everything.”

“Fine,” he sighed, because what else was there to do?

The line clicked off.

It was only a matter of minutes before the head of the newspaper was on the line, ranting about a lead they had gotten. They believed it- they had no reason not to. The chief just went along, promising to hold a town meeting shortly, the paper volunteering to print up a quick flyer and get it on everyone’s doors, and he hung up in a daze.

Everything he knew was bad, and he had a feeling that everything he didn’t know made it a whole lot worse.

🕔

???, Kansas, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Travelling on the road was far from comfortable.

Mike had been growing a lot over the last year and all his body ached constantly, and being folded up in the back seat did nothing to help with the pain.

They were let out to wander around a bit this morning. They had driven all through the night, Argyle taking over for Jonathan, Ms. Byers taking over for Murray. They were still just under a thousand miles from Hawkins and he was just wishing they could just be there.

They had stopped by a gas station to get some breakfast sandwiches and he walked over to find a place to sit.

El was sitting by herself, split from Hopper for the first time in about a day.

He sat down beside her.

“You doing okay?”

She nodded. “Okay,” she said. “It has been… a lot.”

“I bet,” he took a bite of his sandwich. “How’s Hopper?”

“Tired. We’ve talked a little, but he has mostly been sleeping. But I do not want to leave him. I worry.”

He nodded.

“Sometimes,” she said, “I am afraid that if I look away, he will disappear.”

“That’s fair,” he said. “This has all been crazy.”

“We have been talking about… feelings. It is hard for him.”

He held back a snort but he looked up to find El looking at him.

“El?”

“Why don’t you say you love me?” she asked.

Anything he could have possibly said evaporated from his mind, the wind taken from his sails.

“El, you know I care about you.”

“Yes, but you never say love. I’ve been learning, Mike, just how much power and meaning words have. And it means a lot that you have never said them.”

“El-” he started but she just shook her head.

“I’m going to go sit with Hopper,” she said and he wished she wouldn’t look so sad, but he didn’t know what to say. All he could do was watch her leave.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Karen Wheeler

“Have you seen the flyers?” Bethany from the PTA asked. “They're all over town. I heard the paper called the paperboy back to make a second round.”

Karen gave her a pressed smile as she reached for a bag of apples.

She had had women flitting up to her all morning as she tried to finish her grocery shopping, all of them seeming to want to share these bits of gossip with her. And why wouldn’t they? It was what was expected of her.

Karen was growing tired of only being all people expected of her, but it had been so long since she knew who she was outside her kids, her luncheon friends, her husband, that she didn’t know who she was anymore. She pleaded with her kids to talk to her, but they didn’t, not after Will went missing and Barb died. They acted all weird. And the worst part was that she couldn’t even blame them for that. She didn’t know how she would have dealt with that at their age, either.

She supposed she was nice to Joyce. She thought she was odd- there was no denying that. She knew how the town talked about her, how the ladies at church talked about her, but she didn’t have it in her to be standoffish and haughty with her. Maybe she would have been, if other people had around, watching her.  She wondered what kind of person that made her, to be so easily influenced by what she thought other people wanted her to be.

But Joyce was nice, if a bit frazzled. And her son was her son’s best friend, but even if he wasn’t, she would have probably liked Will and Jonthan anyway. Both boys were very polite and he wished Mike or even Nancy sometimes would pick up a queue from one of them, but then never did

“You were always so nice to me Karen, all while the boys were growing up,” Joyce said, one arm crossed across herself, her other arm straight out, holding her cigarette. She always smoked like that, like she had somewhere she needed to go, like she had a million things on her mind. Karen took a deep inhale of her cigarette. She didn’t smoke much, but sometimes she wished she smoked more, health consequences be damned.

“You love your kids, I like to think that is something we have in common. Not to mention you always made sure that Mike was welcome- same with the other boys.”

“I wish I could have had them over more.”

Karen shook her head. “That’s all semantics Joyce. The point is they knew they could be there, they knew they could trust you. I could trust you. When you divorced Lonnie and his sorry ass,” she smirked and Joyce laughed.

“He kind of forced my hand.”

“He left, but you said he couldn’t come back. When I heard I swear I drank to you that night.”

Joyce blushed.

Those times it had been easy, but conversations between them had been few and far between. But now she wished she had been nicer to her and had stopped being so wrapped up in her own problems. Self-absorption was easier than she would like to admit, the memories of last summer echoing in the back of her mind.

She remembered those days at the pool. It was fun, laying by the water, watching the lifeguard. And Billy was strong and muscular, and was tan like they never could manage in Indiana, even with their reflectors.

It was nice, to be wanted, to be desired. To be carried away with the twittering gossip and ogling like she was a teenager again, all of it so intoxicating she almost got enticed into an affair.

And then suddenly she had come-to and it had been jarring, that she had almost done something so stupid. She wasn’t some harlot or a character in a soap opera. She had a life, a family, and responsibilities and the hurt that an affair would cause- she didn’t even want to imagine it.

And then Billy had died and she went with the girls from the pool to pay their respects, but everything felt wrong. She remembered the moment she saw his gravestone and his birth year was one year before Nancy’s and she felt sick. He looked like an adult but he was so young still. She didn’t know what she was thinking.

But she had been swept away with it, the fact that every person she was around wanted him, the exhilaration that she was the only one of them he wanted back. Maybe- maybe they weren’t the kind of people she wanted to spend her time around.

She spent time with the boys’ mothers and she liked when she was with them. They all had such different lives than her, but they were nice. It was strange to think that they wouldn’t have even really gotten to know each other if their boys hadn’t been friends.

Claudia worked, so she always had stories about the things she saw on the job, about summer camps she was looking at for Dustin. Sue was a lot like Karen and they would have likely ended up friends outside of their kids.  She stayed at home, trying to wrangle her kids, though she seemed to do a better job at it than she did.

She shook her head. “I’m telling you Erica’s got a mind of her own. She’s too smart for her own good. At least with Lucas he channeled it into playing games with his friends and getting good grades.”

“Wait until she becomes a teenager,” Karen groused over her cup of tea. “I thought I had Nancy under control but then she started dating Steve- Harrington’s son- and she started doing all sorts of sneaking around and taking back.”

“That Steve boy is good,’ Claudia said. “He drove Dustin to the Snowball”

“He was very respectful,” she allowed, albeit a bit confused how he ended up driving a middle schooler to the dance, “but still, I think Nancy is happy with Jonathan.”

“They’ve got the makings for a good relationship,” Sue said, stirring her tea.

And that was another thing about her- Sue and her husband actually, actively loved each other. Karen didn’t know if she had ever felt that way about Ted, not even on their wedding day. She had had a crush on him, she remembered that, remembered his easy smile, back then. But then when that was gone…

“They’ve got to talk to each other,” she continued. “We’re trying to get our kids to do that, but sometimes I swear it’s like pulling teeth. But Lucas is getting better.”

“I wish I could get Mike and Nancy to talk to me. When Will went missing, Mike just-” she shook her head. “I don’t know. And then the year after he started acting out and then he got this girlfriend out of nowhere and he spent all summer there. He won’t even talk to me about missing her or Will.”

“Sometimes I get mad at Joyce for moving,” Claudia said, “but then I remember what happened and I can’t blame her, not really. Lonnie, Will disappearing, whatever happened that next year,” she shook her head, “I didn’t hear much, but apparently he got a virus and he almost died, then Bob, then Hopper.”

Talking to them was grounding though they were all so busy they weren't able to have these little catch-ups all that often and when she did it was with a whirlwind of energy, a little bit frantic, but it was sparky and alive. And then she would listen to them and she would tell them stories about their kids and in turn they would tell their own and she would learn such sweet little details about Mike, things she never saw because he was always at school or in the basement

They would mostly catch up, talk about the boys’ plans to sleep over, their science fair projects-

“I don’t know if I should thank Mr. Clarke for getting them so into science or what,” Karen said.

“I know what you mean. Dustin is always checking books out of the library. I swear, when he gets a job he’s going to spend all his money on books.”

They also brought over the DnD manual to try to make heads or tails about what their kids were talking about all the time.

“Even Nancy understands some of this,” Karen said, trying to figure out if there was a right or wrong way to turn the board.

“Ok, okay, here we go. Paladin, Cleric, Ranger, that’s what the boys are, Lucas mentioned that-”

“Will is always saying something about dice. There are always dice involved.”

“Here they are,” she looked at them in bewilderment. “Why would someone go around making a die with that many sides?”

Now she wished things could be so simple, wished that should go back to not having anything real to worry about- anything was better than the looming sense of danger that was hanging over them all.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

Nancy waited for her mother to leave before she snuck back down to the basement where they were making their plan.

“What and wait around to get Vecna’d?” Lucas asked, incredulous. “We can try to narrow down who Vecna’s targeting, but with everything that’s happened in Hawkins the past couple years, I don’t think there’s anyone who doesn’t have enough shit to be taken out. I mean, if he’s really desperate, he could do that. Especially to us.”

“We can’t stop fighting him,” Max insisted.

“That’s not what I’m saying. Look, Kate Bush brought you back, right? I say we all get out Walkman, have our favorite song on us, at all times then if we get pulled in, whoever’s with us can start the song and get him to stop.”

Steve nodded. “Lucas is right.”

“Or, you know, we could get out of this batshit town,” Eddie suggested.

“We're in a party. Party doesn’t abandon each other,” Dustin said.

Eddie dropped his head in his hands. “This is insane.”

“I could be bait,” Max suggested.

“No.”

“Lucas-”

“No, I mean, I don’t want you to be bait, but think about it. You fought back. Why would he attack you when he could just get somebody else? He may be vindictive, but he’s on a timetable. You said you mind-ripped off part of his neck. And you ran away. You know about the supernatural. If he just looking for lives there are tons more people here he can target, unsuspecting people.”

The uncomfortable truth settled between all of them.

“The police are issuing a statement that Chrissy, Fred, and Patrick might have been exposed to some sort of gas/nerve agent,” Nancy said. “They’re putting it in line with the gas leak story.”

“How are people taking it?”

She scoffed. “They’re freaking out, predictably. But they just know that they all were contorted, they don’t know about the broken bones. It's believable. Enough.”

“With as many times as the government dogs have been called into this town, I don’t think they couldn’t believe it. There was a suspicious lab, everything that happened with the mall last year, Barb. They’ve all got their theories,” Max said.

“All of that doesn’t matter,” Nancy said. “We’ve got an hour before we have to help with the evacuation and in the meantime we have to make a plan for after. Do we all know what we’re doing?”

“We’ll all split up,” Eddie parroted back the plan they had been going over for the better part of an hour. “Dustin and I will watch section five, make sure no one gets in, make sure they leave.”

“Your parents are in there Nance.”

“Which is why I can’t be the one who does it.”

“Lucas, Steve, and I will be with the people interviewing them to see if any of them are exhibiting Vecna symptoms because I know exactly what to look for,” Max said.

Nancy nodded, all of it going according to her list.

“I heard there’s been a fourth hit,” she said. “So we need to act today, before it become number five. He’ll be weaker because he will be looking harder for someone to possess. After we evacuate, we drop down through Eddie’s place since it's likely last on his radar, we find him, and firebomb him.” She looked up at all of them, challenge in her eyes. “Any objections?”

And then there were none.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Karen Wheeler

Karen slipped into the high school auditorium, Holly in her arms, Ted trailing behind her. She wove through the seats until she found one near the Sinclairs and Claudia.

“Thank you everybody for coming,” Chief Powell said, tapping his papers on the podium. “As I’m sure you are all aware, there have a series of deaths that have shaken the community.” A low murmur went across the auditorium, as to be expected and he waited for it to die down. “We have recently been notified that this is the result of yet another gas leak. We have a tentative map of where the gas leak has been contained so far, but there is a concern that it will continue to spread.  Deputy Calahan has a stack of flyers he will be passing out and we encourage you all to relocate if you are in the current danger zone, evacuating town if you are able.”

“Leave?” someone yelled and he winced.

“I know it is not ideal, but we are trying to encourage the safety of the community in the best way that we can-”

The doors to the town hall flung open. “You can protect us from gas, but you can’t expect us to believe that the deaths that have happened the last few days were caused by that,” Jason boomed, everyone in the seats turning to look at him.

He had always had a captivating presence, what with his letterman jacket and perfect hair. She had sat through a few of the games and he was no Billy, or even Steve Harrington, but he had the makings to become one of them she had thought.

Jason swept down the aisle of the town hall, his teammates trailing behind him clutching stacks of fliers in their hands. They stopped at the start of each row and handed a stack for the parents to pass down while Jason powered through to the front of the room. He only had one in his hands.

“They’re trying to poison this town,” he said.

One of the parents heads shot up, eyes full of delirious terror, and the mutterings began to build through the room, the beginnings of rabid mob mentality. “You may not have seen it,” Jason continued, “but I have. I saw what they did to Chrissy. The things that are done to the bodies… are some unspeakable sort of evil.”

Murmurs rippled throughout the crowd- there had been rumors of what state Chrissy had been found in, the state of that poor boy Fred from Nancy’s journalism class, who was so small and young, who always called her ma’am when she stopped by the school to bring Nancy or Mike something they had forgotten. Such quiet and stand-up kids, the whole lot of them. She hadn’t known Patrick, but she had seen him from a distance at the grocery store, always helping the older women down the curb or opening the door for anybody who needed it, the perfect gentleman. And for these kids to die in such a way was perverse, the way they had been desecrated.

“They have been possessed. Only the grips of Satan himself could have guided the hands of such evil,” he exclaimed.

The murmurs grew louder and Karen felt a shiver pass through her, pulling her into the frenzy. She didn’t believe in possession, not like this, not since Jesus in the Bible, but she wanted to believe it, because it was better than thinking someone chose to do that, that someone existed out there with a heart so evil they could leave their bodies as close to mutilated as they could get without actually being cut.

“I know the identities of the people in this town that had been led astray,” he continued, commanding voice enrapturing his captive audience and the tittering grow louder as he brandished his flyer, the one passed down her row, the flyer in her very hands right now.

“The Hellfire club!” he bellowed, the words on her paper stark and as clear as day, the picture he was holding the same as the one sitting in her lap. She had always thought the design was garish, tasteless even, but she never thought they were doing anything.

She felt sick. It didn’t make sense and the dissonance was making her head spin. Because she knew several of the kids in this club- the half of them the same kids she had seen come to her basement every other weekend so they could fight imaginary monsters and do general boyish things. Her son was one of those kids. They were good kids, Will had done it, and Will was one of the sweetest boys she had ever met- even Nancy had played and, sure, she had an attitude sometimes, but it wasn’t… satanic or anything of that nature.

But she was reeling because if she hadn’t known these kids, if it wasn’t her son they were blaming, she might have gone along with it. The crowd was getting swept up in it, they were getting angry, riled up. He hadn’t produced a picture of the boys or their names, a small mercy, but he might just not have had it yet.

Ted was as impassive as ever, but she caught the eyes of the Sinclairs, of Claudia Henderson, all of them as dead worried as she was, and she was lucky because fortunately Mike was out of town and couldn’t get swept up in all of this. They were circulating copies of some article saying how DnD leads to delinquency and other sinful things.

Chief Powell was trying to say something, trying to quiet them all down but then they were storming out, all they were missing were the torches and pitchforks to complete the picture, her English-lit brain coming back to haunt her at the most inopportune times. Ted always said it was a waste of a degree, but now the joke was on him.

“Are the boys at home?” she asked, sliding up to Sue.

“I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head and Claudia nodded too.

“Erica, do you know where he is?”

“Last I heard, he’s been hanging out with Max, and you know.”

“Who,” she asked, “Those hooligans?” she asked, looking pointedly at the jocks stirring the crowd into a frenzy.

“No, he ditched them a couple of days ago. From what I caught, they were starting to spiral back then.”

“Then where are they now?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, hanging out with the teenagers?”

“Who?” Karen asked.

Erica stared at her like she had grown two heads. “Nancy, you know, your daughter.”

She wanted to say that was impossible, but then she remembered late last night when Nancy came barging in with some other girl, Steve Harrington, and the Munson kid, all of them coated in dirt, Steve without a shirt, covered in blood.

“What the hell is going on?” she demanded.

“Mom?” Nancy stopped at the foot of the stairs, shocked. “I thought you had bookclub tonight.”

“What on this good green earth is that supposed to mean?”

“Nothing Mom.”

They slipped out of the town hall meeting and they wordlessly congregated at the Wheeler's house, the base of operations of so many of those apparently sinister DnD games, trying to figure out what to do next.

🕔

???, Kansas, 1986

Will Byers

They were cramped in the back of the car, not as bad as they would have been if they had to fit all seven of them in the sedan, but it still wasn’t all that comfortable.

But still there was enough space between the front and back seat that they could all have their own conversations without talking over each other. He could have talked to Mike, if either of them had been in the mood for talking. Even Argyle, who had been trying to single-handedly keep up the mood the whole trip, had fallen silent, staring out at the endless rolling plains of Kansas or wherever they were.

Mike was looking forlorn, or maybe just despondent and Will knew it was because of his fight with El. He hadn’t heard much of it, but he had seen them talk and then the sad look on both of their faces.

There was something that twisted in his chest, a feeling he had grown to hate because he knew what it meant and he hated that he understood, despite how much he tried to bury it.

“It” being this care for Mike, but not just friendship. It was selfish, really. He wanted Mike to like him, he wanted Mike to feel better, he wanted to be the one who did that. He always wanted to be the one to make Mike happy.

It was a stupid, selfish feeling, because so much of the last few years had been dedicated to making sure Will was okay, that Will wasn’t getting possessed or kidnapped or whatever, like he was some baby people were terrified of losing. He hated this feeling because Mike was one of his best friends and El was his sister and he still wanted Mike to like him the way Mike liked El.

If he could take the feeling in his hands, he would strangle it, shove it down into nothing. He would never do anything to break them up. His feelings- it was never going to happen. He had known that for a long time now. He had told his mother that he was never going to fall in love and that was still on the table. Falling implied some sort of surrender, but he would not give in to it. No one ever had to know that he felt this way- ever. And he was fine with that, really. He would happily live every day alone, so long as his friends were happy, healthy, and safe.

Mike and El belonged together. They were sweet, or something. They had been dating forever. He wasn’t going to come between them

“Mike, can I show you something?” he asked.

Mike looked over at him, confused, slowly pulling out of his distant headspace.

“Yeah, sure,” he said, blinking away from the last of the reverie he had been stuck in for the past half hour. Will reached to the side of the seat, his fingers shaking. He didn’t know why (he did). He willed his hands to still. This wasn’t the first time he had shown Mike something he had made. He had done it all the time. Mike always seemed to like his work, but he was nervous now, so much time had passed, everything was different between them now, like there was this cavernous distance between them.

Will had learned about the San Andres fault in school, a very California thing to learn about, what with all the earthquakes and everything like that. It seemed crazy that there was a whole other disaster they would have to prepare for, after everything at Hawkins.

But earthquakes were added to the roster, and with it, history lessons on all the significant occurrences of the past hundred years or so. But there was this fault that formed, where the earth just tore in two and now there was just this split in the ground that had never been there before and it couldn’t be patched up. It was all permanent.

It was caused by tectonic plate, pieces of the world, under the surface of everything they had ever known, destined to collide, run up on each other, drift apart forever.

He didn't know why he was thinking of that right now.

He unrolled the painting. It was the Starcourt mall, as best as he remembered it, all of them fighting this shadow beast on the ground below them, all of them surrounding it. He had used all sorts of colors to capture the neon, the light and the dark of the mall. They all were there, save Will who this all was in his perspective, but there, as clear as day were Mike and El, side by side.

“She cares about you Mike,” he said. “All the time. She wrote to you as much as she wrote to Max, and Max is her best friend, you know.”

“Sometimes it's hard,” he said, “when you're different. When what you think or feel is different. Sometimes you want to just get rid of it all and just be normal, but you can't.”

He took a shaky breath and felt Mike's eyes on him. “But there are people who care. The party, El,” he pointed to them. “And they'll always be by your side.”

“Will?”  Mike asked, concerned, his hand hovered over Will’s arm but he didn’t touch him, and that fell over Will like a bucket of ice water. Mike had to know, Mike knew what Will was. He had known for years. He couldn’t even touch him. But that was Will’s fault. But despite what Will was, Mike was still his friend, and Will could keep it that way if he just kept his mouth shut, as long as he locked all of this away. Maybe if he was normal enough the rift between them would stop growing, and they could ignore the fact that W was different.

Carefully he compartmentalized everything and then he turned away from the window and he looked at him.

“I’m fine,” he lied.

Mike’s body drifted away further into his own seat, but he didn’t look like he believed him.

Will caught Jonathan watching him from the rearview mirror

He felt his lies choke him

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

Nancy barely emerged from the basement before she was cornered by her mother.

“Nancy, aren’t you coming with us? We’re staying at the Henderson’s”

She shook her head. “No, I’m going to be with Steve.”

“Steve? Honey, you can’t stay with that boy, alone.”

Nancy bit her tongue, keeping herself from pointing out all the other times that she had been alone with him that her mother never knew about. That wasn’t what this was about. It was a whole fight she didn’t want to get into, how her mother knew nothing about her life, but also how Nancy had been cutting her out on her own, especially after Barb and the Upside Down, when there were things much bigger than having sex with a boy or not wanting to be like her parents to keep a secret. “I’m still dating Jonathan, Mom. Steve’s just got a spare room in his place. I don’t want to impose on Mrs. Henderson more than I have to. Besides, his friend Robin is going to be there too. And she’s a girl.”

Her mom didn’t look reassured but she nodded. “Okay.”

She caught Erica at the bottom of the stairs. “Something weird is going on again,’ Erica said, and it wasn’t a question.

Nancy looked around and the ducked to the side, out of view of the living room, of their parents. “Yeah,” she said, crossing her arms.

“Some new monster, huh? What did you guys name it- Vecna or something?”

“…Yes.”

She snorted. “I knew it. What a bunch of nerds. Anything new besides the clock?How can I help?”

“Nothing yet. We're still working on a plan. I mean we’ve got the gas thing to buy us some time but-”

“That was you guys?” She asked, voice loud before Nancy’s eyes went wide and she lowered it quickly. She poked her head into the living room. Their mothers were unbothered, talking about the PTA, while their fathers were in a lengthy discussion about the new Model Ford.

Nancy leaned back into the hallway, relieved, and nodded. “We think Vecna’s still trying to strike in a clock formation. We're just trying to keep people out of the way.”

“What happens when it hits midnight?”

“I don’t know.”

“I want to help,” Erica said.

“I know. When we know more, we’ll get you, I promise, but Erica,” she held her wrist, catching her before she could leave, “please, keep an eye on our parents. Make sure they stay out of this. Yours, mine, Dustin’s mom, Max’s, all of them, please. They’re going to notice that were not coming home and if they go looking for us-”

“I’ve got it,” she said, with far more seriousness than someone her age should ever have to be. “I’m very convincing.”

“Thanks, Erica. You’re the best!” she called back as she ran out the door.

“I know,” she called after her

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Steve Harrington

“Come on,” Steve said, handing them all the suits. The kids had shot up over the past year, and now they were all as tall as adults. Their faces were still young and they still looked like kids, but they could cover that up with face masks and goggles under the suit. But it was the height that would really sell it.

Eddie walked over with the clipboard and took off the helmet of his suit. “You know this is probably the most respectable I’ve ever looked.”

Steve laughed, surprised. “You better get used to it, Munson. I heard the town hall turned into a witch hunt for your club.”

Eddie actually preened at that, the idea of the disruption without him even being there.

“You understand that means the whole town is after you?” he called after him, but Eddie was already grabbing another sheet from Nancy

Robin made her way over to the table with the few rolls of police tape they managed to scrounge up from the hospital. It had seemed like a lot at first but now they'd just be lucky if it lasted through the end of the day.

“I was able to get an updated city layout from the library and make a copy,” she said, unrolling the map over their already crowded table. “Here are the houses that we need to evacuate. We’re giving them all notice and then they have to check in when they actually leave. We’re getting their move-to address also, make it all sounds, you know, legitimate.”

He nodded. “And once we have the okay, we mark down the doors? “

She nodded. “Exactly,” she said, holding up the caution tape they were going to use to seal off the doors. It wasn't a permanent solution, but it was the best they could do.

Nancy stepped in, handing out the checklist she had made of the town’s residents and photocopied for all of them. “We come back here every half hour to update everything. If someone is not answering the doors, we ask their neighbors where they are, if they can contact them. We’re doing today’s section and tomorrow’s just in case Vecna doesn't seem to care about the time of day when he attacks so let’s move fast, yeah? And if you see your family, send another team to get them out.”

They all nodded.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Eddie Munson 

It took less time than they thought it would to tell everyone to leave.

The news of the town hall meeting had spread to people who hadn’t even gone and there were people leaving in droves, the all-too recent memory of Starcourt hanging over everything.

They found themselves all reconvening at the school, partially to scope the place out as a new base and to also bring the radio back, but not before making a detour.

“Why didn’t we just do this before?” Dustin asked, shaking his head. He pulled the board from the school table, all the old pieces falling off of it onto the ground, their last finished campaign discarded. All of it felt like so long ago. Like a million years had passed.

Eddie couldn’t say that he was heartbroken seeing the pieces rolling on the floor, because that was done and gone, but it made him feel something, a lingering yearning for something he couldn’t speak on. He looked away from the table and caught the eyes of Nancy and she gave him a short nod, almost impossible to see under the bare lighting, but he knew she knew what he felt.

And it hit him, how hard it must have been to try and go back to the way things had been before, especially when all of this kept getting dredged up from the recesses of hell over and over again. The kids seemed to take in stride, but kids were always so resilient, though he never quite knew what that meant until now. Eddie didn’t know how he would be able to reconcile all of this once it was over.

He was struck, suddenly, by how young they had been when all of this had happened and how absolutely old he felt now. He felt positively decrepit and he could understand how any carelessness Steve had had had burned away like the morning fog.

“He takes it all seriously,” he found himself saying, eyes lingering where Steve was talking to Max.

Nancy stared at the wall. “When we were still together it was like it was the last thing he wanted to think about. He does that now, but I can see it, he doesn’t forget about any of it. He just wants to keep things normal, for everybody. Maybe he thinks it will help everyone regain their sanity, I don’t know.

“All I know was that was not what I wanted when we were together. It was one of the reasons we broke up. Maybe it was the only reason. I couldn’t look past it. I don’t know,” she said, shaking her head.

“Maybe you should talk to him.”

“We wouldn’t get back together. Too much has happened, we’ve changed too much. We’ve both moved on.”

“Maybe, but you can still be friends,” he said, almost surprised by the advice coming out of his mouth.

He wasn’t one for these sentimental things. He was about fighting the system, being who you were even if society shit on it, but now he was just left with all this confusion and pain. If he had been braver and tried to stay Chrissy’s friend. There was no fear of rejection- she wasn’t the type. He had liked spending time with her, but he never tried because, if he was honest with himself, for all his bravado, he was one hell of a coward.

And here were these people younger than him, lives torn apart for much crueler reasons.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler 

Steve looked up and saw Nancy. She gave him a small smile and he drifted over to her.

“Eddie thinks we should reconcile.”

“Haven't we?”

She shrugged.

“Our fight made sense, “ he said. “I know why you were upset. “I mean, I got it. It was one thing for me to stumble into that house. It was just one night, it wasn’t a week like it was for you and Jonathan. And I don’t know, I guess I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want it to be real. One night, I could pretend like it wasn’t as big as it was, that it felt like a lot because it all happened so fast. 

“But then it happened again and again and we went together and I couldn’t pretend anymore, and you were gone, you were moving on and I was stuck reconciling with the horror of it all, and then there were these kids,” his voice broke, gesturing out into nothing. “And I know Dustin would kill me for saying this but they were so young and I couldn’t let anything happen to them.

“All of them, they just took it all in stride and what I had been though was so different. That house, being chased down by that thing? How do you even say it? The only ones-” he cut himself off, looking guilty but Nancy finished for him

“Were Jonathan and I, and we weren’t there.”

“I’m not blaming you. You were working on another piece of the whole mess. You didn’t need to carry it all on your own.”

“You held yourself just fine, Steve Harrington. You don’t give yourself enough credit. And I did love you, but everything-”

“It killed it,” he said simply, because it was simple. “It was a fragile thing, wasn’t it?” he asked ruefully. “There was no way it could have survived all that, could it?”

“I want to be friends with you,” she said hurriedly. “I held a lot against you and I never talked to you.”

“I would like that,” he said with a smile.

“Besides,” she said, “I don’t think we’re going to have a choice now. Seeing as I’ve become friends with your girlfriend,” she leaned into him to nudge him.

“Hey,” he rolled his eyes. “Robin’ll kill you if she hears you say that.”

“I’m surprised you never made a move.”

He laughed. “Oh, I did, at Henderson’s insistence and to my massive embarrassment. It’s crazy,” he said, looking at her, “how easy it is to like someone and be convinced you’re in love with them when you’re not?”

“And yet you became friends,” she raised a brow.

“Best friends,” he corrected. “I’ve never had that before.”

“Not even Tommy and Carol?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Tommy, Carol, and I weren’t really like that. We knew it wasn’t like that. We had a good time together,” he said, “even if I felt like shit after sometimes.” He shook his head. “But with Robin, it isn’t like that. It feels so nice to just hang out without the pressure of high school or because I should because we like each other. Like we can only want to be with each other if we want to get in each other’s pants.”

“I know that. I feel like maybe I judged you a bit too harshly. I told everyone you were different but I don’t think I fully believed it either. I defended you to Barb,” she said with a laugh. “Barb was so mad about it. But I’m not because it turns out I was right.”

“Tell me about her,” he said. “I don’t think I ever asked you about her.”

Nancy felt her eyes burn and it became hard to swallow around the lump in her throat. “Well, she absolutely loved Baywatch, though if anyone asked her she would vehemently deny it, but I caught her one time. She was so defensive about it, she told me it was something frivolous and I told her I didn’t care that she watched it...” and she told him about her until the lump burned away to nothing, and she told him everything. The good times, the bad times, the times when they annoyed the hell out of each other and all the sleepovers they had that felt like nothing, but that they would never have again.

And Steve listened to it all in a way he hadn't been able to when they were together, trying to make it work.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Dustin Henderson 

Dustin led them back down the hall until they got to Mr. Clarke's room. He pointed over to the desk where they had first taken the radio, but now they were bringing it back. It had worked well enough out by the road, but it would be optimal to use here, set up properly. Especially when they needed to call Mike and Will.

He turned to look at Steve and Eddie and he frowned. They both were looking sick and pale.

Max saw it too, brows furrowing. “Are you all okay?”

Dustin and Lucas got to work setting the radio back up, and tuning in, but even he could tell.

The teenagers were all getting sick. And there was only one thing that could have caused it.

Steve lurched forward, dry heaving into the wastebasket 

“Shit! How much of that shit did you all breathe?” Dustin yelled, distraught.

“We’ll have to smoke them out, use the sauna and everything,” max said, looking frantically between them all.

“And what? Catch it in a jar?”

“The only people who did this before aren’t here or they’re currently being possessed.

“We’re not possessed,” Steve objected.

“No, you’re right. You’re dying.”

Eddie raised a hand weakly. “If this is being possessed, it feels like shit.”

🕔

???, Missouri, 1986

Mike Wheeler

They had pulled over as soon as the radio came back to life.

Mike propped the radio up on the back of the car while they all listened to what was happening in Hawkins.

“We’re going down soon,” Nancy said. “The town is settled, moss the time to hit Vecna where-” a loud cough ripped through the radio- “he is.”

Mike grabbed the walkie. “Don’t do anything,” he said. “Wait until we get there. Over.”

“Mike people are dying, over.” Nancy said over the line, her voice hard even from this far away.

“And so you’re going to go in with some half-assed plan? The government's shit at all of this and we’re the only other people who know about all of this. You want risk all of this for something like that? Over.”

“What do you suggest?”

“Just wait,” he said. “Over.”

There was silence over the walkies and the tension was palpable where all of them were sitting around it. Ms. Byers was standing with her arms crossed, leaning back against the U-Haul; Hopper, El, and Murray were sitting along the back bumper. Mike and Will were sitting on the back bumper of the car and Jonathan and Argyle were standing and waiting.”

The walkie crackled back to life.

“-ike it’s Dustin. We’ll wait, but you guys need to get here fast. Over.”

“Thank you. Over,” he said, finally able to exhale fully.

He didn’t know how to put it into words, but he’d had a bad feeling about their plan. Foreboding or something. He just needed them to hear him.

“I just didn’t-”

“I felt it,” Will said. “I know.”

Mike nodded dumbly.

Hopper was watching him.

“We need a plan- an actual plan,” Mike said not willing to be talked away from it, ready for a fight

“No,” Hopper said. “No, I think you were right there. Don’t let it get to you head Wheeler.”

“I won’t,” he said turning and leaving. His relationship with Hopper was uneasy, but that was the way it always had been. It was a bit softer now that they found out he was not dead, but he didn’t know how long it would last until it staled again. They hadn’t seen eye to eye since the first time they met, when he interviewed them in the principal’s office.

He knew that Hopper hadn’t taken them seriously back then, probably didn’t now, but he didn’t care. He didn’t want his validation- he wanted his friends to be alive.

🕔

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Eddie Munson

“So you named all the monsters and stuff you guys have seen after DnD characters?” Eddie asked. They were out doing their last round, and it all had been good so far, but Eddie needed it to be over soon because his body was aching and revolting against him.

“Well, is there anything else? It’s not exactly like there’s a precedent for this kind of situation,” Dustin said. “I tried to watch one, you know, to study it, but it would not stay. It was a bad idea, but if it stuck around long enough the lab or whatever would have probably given them some sort of complicated scientific name.”

“What, like a dinosaur or some shit?”

“Yeah, probably.”

“Cool,” Eddie said before he whipped back around to look at him. “Wait you tried to capture one? I thought I was out there, but are you certifiable, Henderson.”

“You know, Steve thought I was crazy too. Well, I guess everyone did,” he mused. “I’ll admit it wasn’t my best move.”

“Steve was there with you?”

“Yeah, I found him he was trying to do something but I told him it was an emergency and he was there to help me catch it. Lucas, Max, I all went out with him to the junkyard and he hit some of them with the nailbat and then we had to hide in the bus.”

Eddie looked like he had just been smacked over the head with 15 million pieces of information at once. “Steve just hung out with a bunch of kids?” he settled on, because there was so much stuff to unpack with everything else. Like, what was Steve doing? Where was the monster hiding? How did the capture it? Why did they go to the junk yard?

“You do,” Dustin said pointedly.

And, well, he had him there. “I guess that’s fair. You all are some pretty cool kids.” He pulled him into a noogie. Dustin laughed and shoved him off and Eddie staggered away, laughing himself.

There was a crunch behind him and he felt immediately sobered.

“Did you hear that?”

“Hear what?” Dustin asked, humor dying immediately. “Do you have your music ready?” Dustin asked, fingers already straying to the Walkman on his hip.

“Yeah, but if you’re telling me that then I’m not-” Eddie started but the words were knocked out of him literally as he was tackled to the ground. Jason was over him, his eyes crazed.

“Dude, what the hell?” Dustin screamed, but Eddie could only focus on Jason crouching over him, his jacket clutched in his hands.

“I know you killed Chrissy,” he spoke with conviction, like if he said it with enough authority Eddie would just admit to it. “You have the whole rest of the town fooled, but you have your little cult beside you killing everybody else to take the eyes off of you. You even killed Patrick who never did anything to you. Satan has infiltrated your mind,” his hands were rattling like a man possessed.

“I wouldn’t do that man. I wouldn’t kill Chrissy.”

“Why? Because you had a pathetic little crush on her since middle school? You’re angry she would never like you like she likes me. Were you jealous? Why did you kill her if you were? Why didn’t you kill me?” he screamed, spittle flying from his lips

“I didn’t kill her,” he said, tears burning his eyes in terror, as Jason’s hands tightened in their hold on him. “Chrissy was my friend.”

“Get off of him!” Dustin yelled, barreling into him and shoving him off.

Eddie staggered to his feet like a drunk man.

“Don’t do it again,” Dustin said.

Jason was on his feet, but his eyes were distant, emptying and he stepped back, swaying where he stood.

Eddie didn’t know Jason- he hated Jason- but he knew that look-

“No,” he said trying to push himself forward to grab him but it was too late.

Jason was flung up into the air like a rag doll, his eye wide, his jaw opened wider and then there was a sickening crack. He could hear the Dustin was saying something beside him but he couldn’t register any of it, all he could do was stare in horror at Jason as his body was contorted grotesquely, at the way he couldn’t even scream in pain and then he just… dropped. Straight to the ground, like an egg. Splat.

There were hands on him, lifting him to his feet.

“Hey, Munson you need to get up, you can’t stay here, you have to keep going.”

Steve was bodily pulling him away from it, had to basically drag him- not because he wanted to stay but because he wasn’t sure how he would be able to leave.

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Steve Harrington 

Eddie was pliant and they could kind of shove him into the car but it was probably because he was in shock, his eyes were glazed, but at least he was in the car.

Dustin told them everything, and Steve swallowed it all down.

The cops came by, grim. They sent the body to the morgue, the cover story already in place, and they interviewed him and Dustin on what happened.

By the time they pulled up to the Wheeler’s driveway Eddie was starting to come back to himself.

“You okay, man?”

He nodded. “Yeah, I just…” he trailed off. He still had that distant look in his eyes.

Steve nodded. “I know.”

Steve turned back to the wall. Someone had added Jason the map.

He felt Robin come up beside him. “Do you think it will be us?”

“I don’t know,” he said. He wanted to make some joke about how they had survived the Russians and if they could do that they could do anything, but that wasn’t the same. They hadn’t fought the Mind Flayer 2.0 or whatever this was. The Russians were humans, and when they had fought the Mind Flayer before, they fought it when it was this big, tangible thing. Then it was the size of the Starcourt mall. And that wasn’t really their fight. Their fight had been underground against human opponents. And even then, they almost hadn’t made it out of there alive.

He felt a warm hand take his own. He turned a bit, just enough to see her face and she gave him a small smile. She didn’t try to reassure him or tell him that they were going to be fine, but that was fair since she was the one that expressed doubt in the first place.

There was just something darker about everything this time. Before, everything could be separated from Hawkins. Before, bad things just happened in Hawkins. Now those bad things were becoming meshed in the fabric of the town, unable to be isolated. Now it was starting to creep into Hawkins like a disease. Only five people had died, but there had been a jolt in the earth, each time a bit stronger than the last.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Chief Calvin Powell

Chief Powell was at his whit’s end.

Five people were dead, five people he needed to explain their deaths to the public. The first four had been unprecedented, their deaths unnaturally violent. Now Jason was dead, too. It was easy to write off as natural causes as the whole town was in complete disarray. It was easy to say he lost his balance in the rebar and unsteady feet. A twisted bloody body could be explained by that, but Powell  would always have his own suspicions, ones he couldn’t avoid anymore.

Eddie had been plenty distraught- just as much so as he had been after they found him after Chrissy had died- so he didn’t think it was him, but it was getting unavoidable that something was going on, and Will’ Byers friends were involved in it.

“We’re going to have to interview them, aren’t we?” Deputy Callahan asked and he nodded grimly.

🕕

???, Indiana, 1986

Mike Wheeler

“Detour,” Murray hollered, all but flinging himself up between the front seats.

“Je-Fuck!” Jonathan shouted, almost swerving off the road.

“Why did we let him sit in the back with us,” Mike pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to ward off a headache.

“Because I’m trying to avoid the sob fest in the trailer and El’s the only one willing to be back there,” Murray said he wedged himself up further between the two front seats. “Stop by my place,” he said, sticking his finger up in the front seat.

“Yes, okay, stop with the yelling.”

“Hawkins is kind of in danger, imminent danger,” Mike said, not even trying to hide the irritation, “like the gate opening-”

“Yes, I know. You can be a little shit aren’t you?”

Mike felt a pang of something in him but he shoved it down. It wasn’t the first time he had been called that and it wouldn’t be the last. Seemed as though he had a proclivity towards assholery.

“I have some stuff that might help us at my place. Might as well stock up.”

“Awesome brochacho,” Argyle said, offering him a fist bump and Murray didn’t look like he knew quite how to respond to that.

Murray stayed up in the front giving Jonathan and Argyle the lay of whatever boobytraps he had apparently set in place since the Russians and Mike leaned back against the seat, tilting his head back and praying for a break from this.

“Hey,” he cracked one eye open and Will was staring at him, concerned. He looked like he wanted to place a hand on Mike’s knee but he was hesitant, unsure, and Mike wanted to disappear because he made things like that. He had been stupid and avoided him at the airport and now Will wasn’t even sure if he could touch him.

He  looked at Will in the space between Murray’s back and the seat. He offered him a small smile and mouthed headache.

Will nodded, but it wasn’t enough. Mike’s hands itched to move to him.

Jonathan made quick work deciphering Murray's instructions on how to get to his place.

Mike had never been to Murray’s before. He had never felt any need to since he didn’t know the guy and he didn’t need to break any conspiracies out into the open. He had been right in the middle of them. Besides, Mr. Clarke was kind of their go-to for all extremely vague but ultimately helpful science questions.

He hadn’t known about Nancy and Jonathan visiting him until months later, when Nancy told him, tightlipped and looking around to make sure that they weren’t overheard. It had been- he didn’t know the word for it- nice, he guessed, to talk to her. Because for as much as she was a gigantic nerd Nancy was really cool, but they didn’t talk to each other because he was busy being a brat and before that she was a snooty teenager. Now she spent all her time working the newspaper and him at school and DnD. They had gone through the same thing, but not quite, not enough- she hadn’t known what it was like to lose Will and then Eleven and then both of them last summer because of his stupidity and then to them moving.

She had lost Barb and Barb wasn’t coming back. She didn’t have the chance to send letters or call her on the phone. It was hard because he had his friends back but he didn’t feel better. If anything, everything felt worse all the time.

And he wanted to talk about it, but he couldn’t. All of this happened and Nancy became cool and badass and she had grown up, all while Mike felt like he was stumbling around in a body that was growing too big for him.

He shook his head, trying to pull his mind out of that pit of thoughts and back to Will, but Will was already looking back out the window.

His hair was still in a bowl cut and he wondered when Mrs. Byers was always going to cut his hair like that, or if there would be a day where Will would want something different. He thought maybe it would be a comfort, that that had remained the same, but it seemed ill-fitting with all the time that had passed.

He pulled his eyes away from him, unwilling to go down that train of thought either. Last thing he needed was to despair over the passage of time. He turned his attention to the window and watched as the sights became familiar again, highways he recognized, patches of trees.

“Left up here.”

Jonathan nodded and turned and they were taken to a secluded section of the forest, or, more accurately, a house in a secluded section of the forest.

They got out of the car and Mike’s legs breathed a sigh of relief at the chance to finally stretch out.

Will was on the other side of the car stretching with his hands up above his head and Mike mimicked him and- oh, that felt good.

“Let’s go,” Murray clapped his hands together. “We don’t have all day.”

Mike met Will eyes and rolled his own. Will looked away, but Mike caught the way his bit his cheek, trying not to laugh.

Hopper and Ms. Byers stumbled out of the trailer, El trailing behind.

“Why are we stopping?” Hopper asked, voice drunk on pain and being cramped up in a trailer for a day and a half except the times they had stopped to pee.

“Murray has some stuff he needs to get,” Jonathan said.

Murray led them into his house, which was a mess. Mike’s mom would have rather died than have guests over to the house in such a state.

“Here,” he said, gesturing to a large wooden chest. He dragged it out to the center of the room and lifted the lid and -okay.

It was full of medieval weapons- swords, a double-sided ax, maces, a bow and arrow

Mike looked over the swords piled up on Murray’s floor and pulled one out of the mess of metal. It wasn’t the biggest or most impressive one in the lot by a long shot, but it looked like one he could carry.

It was heavy, but not too much- enough that there would be heft with each swing and that it could be used to deliver a final blow.

They all picked over the weapons. Jonathan was on the fringe of the group before he slipped in and pull out a dagger from the mix. It was a small, understated weapon, but it was plenty sharp.

Murray let all of them grab weapons. He was rambling about Odeon warfare and classics, as if Nancy hadn't shot Upside Down stuff through with her revolver.

And then they were back in the car, and Mike could almost have been convinced the last half hour had been a hallucination, if not for the blade now wedged between the door and the seat.

Their caravan came all but careening into Hawkins, Jonathan ushering the car the last of the way as his foot pressed heavily on the gas. It technically probably wasn’t enough to get them pulled over, but the shift felt different after they saw that Hawkins sign.

The air was tense and Mike felt like he was buzzing out of his skin. He ducked down to the backpack between his legs and riffled through its contents until he found the walkie.

“This is Mike calling the party. We’ve just entered Hawkins, over.”

The walkie buzzed with static and he pressed down the call button in impatience again.

“This is Mike calling the party. We have just entered Hawkins, over.”

The radio crackled again and he was just about to press it open again, only for Will to stop his hand just as he heard a voice cut through the static-

“-ike- Mike? Over.”

“Yeah? Dustin? This is Mike, over.”

“Yeah, we were out of range for a second there-”

“All the rocks at skull rock are messing our radios and causing crazy interference,” Lucas chimed on.

“Skull rock?” Mike muttered.

“The kissing place,” Will cut in Mike shot him a look like how did you know about that place? But Will just shrugged.

“Long story short, Eddie was accused of murder and now is un-accused but he needed a place to hide out. Not a lot of people want to go to a make out spot when people are dropping dead.”

“We’re checking our compasses,” Lucas added. “They’re going haywire again. Over.”

“New gates? Over.” he asked.

“Yeah. One in every spot where someone was killed. We’ve been trying to check for any pop-up ones that come out of nowhere, but we haven’t found any. Over.”

“That might have been the Demogorgon thing,” Jonathan called over his shoulder. “Only he was able to slip through.”

Will nodded. “He pulled me though the shed and that gate was gone right?”

“Yeah.”

“We’ll meet you at the Byers. The police are interrogating Nancy over at your parent’s place. We managed to sneak out but we have to make our appearances. Nancy said she would give them the waterworks. Over”

Mike scoffed, clicked back on “Nancy’s a shit actor. Over.”

“Don’t I know it. That’s why I’m giving her thirty minutes tops before they’re moving on. They can’t see everyone’s back.

Mike felt his eyes go wide. “Wait, wha-”

“Well see you later, over and out,” Dustin called.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Joyce Byers

Joyce almost breathed a sigh of relief at the sight of Hawkins again. Despite all the horrible things that had happened there over the years, it had been her home. It felt nice to just know where she needed to go.

She reached for the walkie she had up on the dashboard. Will had dug though his boxes to find it so that they could communicate through between the cars.

“I’m going to make a stop,” she said, pulling off on Main Street. Jonathan parked his own car beside the U-Haul and she got out. She glanced through the window at her kids.

They all waved, save Murray, who looked disgruntled, as if he hadn’t just had them all pull over at his place like an hour ago.

“Stretch your legs,” she said, “maybe grab some food.”

Jonathan nodded and they all headed across the street to Melvins. Her heart ached to see it still standing. She shook her head and headed for the bank.

It was quiet, like it always was and she saw a familiar face at the till.

“Stan?” she asked, ducking in through the banker’s door.

“Joyce?” he looked shocked. “What are you doing back in Hawkins? Are you here for your house?”

“It’s a long story and I was here to ask something crazy, to ask if maybe you had some place for sale but it’s true? You haven’t sold the house?”

In her haste to leave Hawkins, she had offered the house up to anyone to buy, and then just offered it to the bank to resell.

“Joyce,” he said. “You’re kidding, right? Half of Hawkins thinks this house is haunted. Also, I don’t know what the hell happened to that house, but the amount of damage done is astronomical.  The inspector said there was some sort of charring in the foundation of the floor-”

“Well, yeah, but what about all the repairs we put in? Doesn’t that do something with, like, the equity or whatever?”

“Not when it’s that extensive, Joyce. Why are you back in town?”

“I was actually looking for a place to rent. I think we’re going to stay.”

“Look, you can have your old place back. Pick up right where you left off with your payments, just not counting the months you were gone.”

“Stan you don’t have to-”

“Please, I’m begging you to take this hell pit off my hands.”

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Steve Harrington

“We’re going to need a new base,” Dustin was saying, while Lucas’ eyes were still focused on the compass. Steve had been driving them all over town so they could test the compass from different distances from the gates throughout town, despite the fact that they knew the police were waiting to talk to them back at the Wheelers. Steve knew it was only a matter of time before they called him in too.

He kept forward, but he wanted to stop the car and rest his head on the steering wheel. It felt like his head was pounding and he was also sick.

He had thought that Dustin had been overreacting about the exposure to the Upside Down, but now he was worried he was right.

“Stop the car!” Dustin hollered and Steve slammed on the breaks.

“What the fuck-” he started but Dustin and Lucas were already climbing out of the car. Steve yanked out his keys and pulled himself out of the car, arm slung over the roof of it.

“Holy shit,” Dustin said, because right there, in front of the Byers house was a U-Haul with Will and Mike and El.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan pulled up along the old, familiar driveway and he could sense how still Will had gotten beside him. His walkie was still out- he couldn’t bring himself to put it back- and they piled out of the car.

The cool spring air of Hawkins was refreshing after the sharp heat of the west coast, even if it meant his windbreaker was quickly becoming ineffective against the weather.

The Byers’ house looked the same as it always had, if a little more overgrown in the front now that there was no one around to tame the wild grasses and clear away the twigs and sticks that littered the ground.

He hadn’t been able to bring himself back here- he had been avoiding it like the plague. And maybe it was- only one of loneliness and sadness.

Joyce, Murray, El, and a hobbling Hopper all poured out of the U-Haul and onto the ground just as they heard the sound of flying gravel and tennis shoes.

“Holy shit, you’re here,” Dustin, said barely coming to a stop before running over to them and nearly tackling them to the ground.

Lucas was on them in an instant and  threw himself into the pile of them and Jonathan hadn’t seen Will smile as hard as he was right now the entire week

And then Max was here, flying out of Steve’s car, slamming the door behind her to attack El, who was also screaming with excitement.

“El?”

A smile broke out on El’s face. “Max!” She left the boys behind to crash into Max, giving her a big hug. “I missed you. How are you?”

“Well,” Max, pulled back slightly from her equally tight embrace and looked around kind of wary. “Let’s just say you all chose a hell of a time to come back. How was California?”

“California sucked,” she said gravely and Max laughed.

“Did you at least go to the beach?”

“The beach? No. Joyce said it's cold still. We were going to go in the summer.”

Max made a noise of distress. “That’s, like, the only part of California that’s worth it.” She pulled back. “We’ll just have to go there when this is all over. A proper trip to California, led by the expert.

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Maybe after high school, like a road trip.”

“Bitchin’,” El nodded resolutely

Jonathan smiled at the exchange, relieved that El finally looks so happy outside of the house

“Wait,” Dustin, did a double take

“Chief Hopper?” Lucas finished, confused.

Jonathan turned in time to see Hopper limping out from where he had settled at back of the U-Haul, everyone from Hawkins gaping like they had seen a ghost, which he supposed they had.

“We had to take a detour,” Ms. Byers said with a sheepish smile.

They unloaded as much of the story as they could in the driveway, about them trying to convince El to come back, her punching Brenner in the face-

-“Aw, yes!” Dustin said, “Up-top! Serves that son-of-a-bitch right”-

-and then how they booked it all the way back to Hawkins.

Lucas’ brows furrowed in concern. “When did you have a chance to sleep?”

“Uh, we didn’t really, just when we could,” Mike said. “What about all of you? People are dying.” They only knew the barebones that they could explain over the radios, which was a lot but Jonathan had a feeling they left out quite a lot for the sake of brevity.

“It might just be better if we show you.”

Jonathan spun around and there, in all her angelic beauty, was Nancy Wheeler. He didn't know when she had escaped questioning by the police, but she was here now  and then she opened the trunk of Steve's car to reveal mountains of maps.

It hadn’t taken long for them to set up the new headquarters, and in that time get caught up on everything they had found out in the Upside Down, as well as at the hospital.

The house was exactly like they had left it, except maybe a bit dustier.

The U-Haul remained parked crooked in the driveway and they all piled in, all of them with sleeping bags to put in the bedrooms and then they got to work. The living room became homebase, the barren walls the perfect template for all of their work. They didn’t even bother to be careful with the paint since the walls had already been ruined twice before already.

Nancy and Robin found a picture of Henry Creel, who was apparently also Vecna, and El told them about him, about the things she had been remembering since she had been put in the tank at the lab.

“Henry- Vecna was a kid. He didn’t deserve all the things that happened to him. That I did to him.”

“No,” Mike said, pacing across the room. “Brenner taking him and putting him in the hospital was fucked up, having him stay there as an orderly, that’s messed up too. But you all are like, ‘oh his family is dead, that’s so tragic.’ Didn’t we just understand that he killed his family? He’s been messing with dark power. El you weren’t some monster for wanting to help him any more than you are for wanting to believe Brenner could be a good person. That just proves you’re a fucking good person.  But Vecna? That’s the same guy who killed all those kids, helped kidnap Will, and killed a fuck-ton of other people. You think I’m going to feel sorry for that pile of shit? I’m not.”

El blinked and then her face set. “You are right. I just feel guilty, but he was… manipulative.” She grimaced.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Karen Wheeler

“Karen!”

Karen looked up to see Claudia Henderson standing in the hallway.

She didn’t know what to think about that. To say she had been feeling frazzled all day- the last few days- would be an understatement. The police had come by to talk to the kids- apparently Jason was dead now too- but then while Nancy was talking, the kids disappeared. She had been mortified, but they didn’t push, almost like they had expected it, though they were resigned. Shortly after the police left, Nancy had gone too.

They were all staying at the Henderson’s and it was a bit cramped, but they were making it work. Or it should have been crowded, if their kids had actually been there.

“Yes?”

Claudia set her groceries down on the counter. “I was just getting food and I could have sworn I saw Mike across the street at Melvins.”

“Mike?”

She nodded.

Karen felt faint. Surely, he would have called, but then again, if he did, it wasn’t like she was home to get the call.

“How’s town?” Charles asked.

Claudia's face drew serious. “Not good. Most people have left, but Jason’s death is making everyone more on edge, especially regarding DnD. I don’t think the boys should be out right now.”

“I think they’re with Eddie,” Karen found herself saying

“I’m worried,” Sue said and Karen couldn’t help but agree.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

Will shouldn’t have been surprised how fast his house changed. Over the past four years he had seen this house in varying states of just straight-up chaos, disorder, and disaster. Regular decor to Christmas lights and the possession-induced crayon map of Hawkins, but this was somehow even worse.

There was no furniture here aside from a folding table and chairs, which made the whole space feel oddly off. And on top of that, there were maps and pictures and notes everywhere, like some sort of conspiracy board.

There were at least half a dozen maps tacked up on the walls, each showing a different dimension of Hawkins- topography, population, anything that could divide up the space, trying to find a rhyme or reason behind the attacks. There were maps where the attacks had been so far, and where the new gates were, where the old ones had come up as well.

He stashed his stuff in his old room and then he was out with the others. Dustin, Steve, Mike, and Lucas were all fussing over the city map, marking the sites of the other attacks.

Will gravitated towards it, pointing at the center of the map.

“We- well, Erica- figured it’s like a clock,” Dustin was saying, “Everyone we’ve managed to grab said they heard a clock and we found old research from the Creel house Max saw and there was a clock there too. And the clock tower is the center of town.”

He nodded, ears already catching onto the other conversations happening around him.

“We’ve been going off of this,” he heard Steve explaining to Mom and Hopper, who were clinging to each other like they were afraid that if they let each other out of their sight they were going to lose each other forever. Jonathan was standing with them, Argyle having left to sit on the porch to get some fresh air with Eddie. Will felt himself gravitate to him.

“It’s a bit rough,” Steve was saying to Jonathan. “We’re just guessing at this time. We wish there were more exact markers for these spots but we're just going with a rough estimate.” Robin leaned over his shoulder close and pointed at it to show Jonathan.

“We went into the hospital and got some of those hazmat suits, so we have them if we need them, but the air down there is breathable,” she said. She winced. “Trial by experience.”

His mom and Hopper winced and he remembered that they had been down in the Upside Down too, how they had had those suits. He could have told them the air was breathable, that he had survived. He thought of the time he spent hiding and Will was just reminded of the darkness and the dinge and the particles everywhere, the world so, so cold-

Will felt a presence by his side, warmth right at his elbow.

“I saw him,” Max said. “I saw the house and I drew that as best I could.”

He blinked. He was in the living room of his old house. It wasn’t cold.

“I saw it,” he said. “It was good.” Her pictures had been tacked up on one of the walls.

She scoffed derisively. “Well, you were always the nicer one of us.”

“I don’t know about that,” he said, staring off at the other group.

“I was wondering,” she said, “I was wondering if you would be able to help me, draw him. Maybe we could put him on poster, say that some guy wearing a mask was behind the gas leaks.” She scoffed. “Gas leaks. The same thing at Starcourt. It’s like we’re telling them they’re contagious.”

Will grinned. “We get people to confess they’ve seen a caricature of the devil himself? I’m sure they’ll be lining up.”

She rolled her eyes but she was smiling.

“Sure,” he said. He picked up a piece of printer paper they had all grabbed from Mike’s house and they tucked away to the corner of the room by the couch. Someone had taken out one of mom’s Brittanica’s and he used that as a board.

She told him what she saw and his mind almost supplied other parts.

Their part of the room was a quiet oasis compared to the rest of the room, just pencil scratches against paper and quiet murmurings.

“Did you see him?”

He shook his head, erasing an errant line. “It’s like his voice… shaped his face. Like a bats echolocation or something. It gives dimension not details.”

“So it was him.”

He shook his head. “It was, but I’m not sure it was all the time. He felt like a mouthpiece for it. He was there a lot, I got that shape but there was something behind him, this massive looming thing and that was what I felt the most. I heard Vecna but I felt it all the time. That’s who I felt even when it was silent. It was like this big, imposing thing.

“The Mind Flayer,” she breathed. “I’m sorry I shouldn’t have-”

He shook his head: grabbing her hand. “It helps,” he said. “To have this face, at least. A face means it can be killed, right? A  face means we know who we're fighting.”

She hesitated and then nodded, sinking back against the wall with him.

They drifted back to the main table.

They had sheets of plastic that they laid up over the map, marking all sorts of things all over town.

“Here are where the murders have been so far,” Nancy said, putting a little x on each spot in blue. “All of those places are also where a portal has opened up now,” she said, slapping another sheet of plastic over it and marking those off in red.

“Here,” she said, taking out another marker, “is where a portal has been opened before,” she said, crossing off the lab, the mall, everywhere in green. “And here,” she said with a heaving breath, “is where someone has been taken when a temporary portal opened up.” She marked the Harrington’s house and the Byers’ in black. “None of these old portals have opened again, not without substantial intervention on our side,” she said, circling the lab before handing the marker off to Dustin.

“Now,” he said, leaning back, “there has to be some deterrent as to why they are repeatedly opening up new portals instead of the old ones. Afterall, re-opening the old ones would be ideal right? Strategically, because they know where things are. A new portal is a disadvantage because you can’t control where it is.” He looked out at all of them but no one objected.  “It stands to reason that the closed portals are scarred over in space-time, less likely to be reached through because it will take substantially more energy to open. And it also stands to reason that where Barb and Will were pulled through would be some of the weakest parts in town, before that. So we're thinking the membrane, so-to-speak, between the dimensions is not a one-size-fits-all. I think that, aside from the lab, they were just opening portals where it was the easiest and dealing with the logistics later.”

“But Vecna is using people to target locations,” Mike said.

“Speaking of,” Dustin said. “How’s the picture coming along?”

He had finished the face and now he had been working to what the rest of him looked like. This was harder, but Max was good at describing so he could almost see it himself. “Max was saying he had these things attached to his back,” he said, and the others nodded, “but they remind me of the vines in the Upside Down.”

She nodded. “They looked like spider arms.”

“He’s really into the whole spider thing,” Lucas said, “and clocks for some reason,” and he sounded so thoroughly unimpressed, almost disappointed that Will couldn’t help but laugh.

“But why did he have them,” Dustin said, tapping his chin with the pen.

Max’s brown furrowed as she thought of it. “I dunno, but it was almost like they were powering him.”

“That means he is still weak.,” El said. “He- Henry- should have died, but he did not. We know that the Upside Down saved him, but what if he is still in need of saving? If he cannot power up, he will surely die.

His mom nodded, face distant as she recalled the place. “I remember those vines.  They were everywhere. They-” she froze.

“What?” Dustin pressed.

Hopper took his mom’s hand. “They had Will,” he said. “I don’t know if you remember, I don’t know how you could, but they were down your throat.”

The vague sensation of something cold and slick being pulled from backbackback of his throat, enough to gag-

“That’s the library,” Will pointed right beside it, the words not coming out but Mom and Hopper seemed to understand.

“There was a heart or something there in the Upside Down,” Ms. Byers said. “It was where we found Will. It was a big hub.”

“Like the tunnels,” Mike said mapping it together

“So Vecna hangs out over here,” Mike said, taking a pin and sticking it on the outskirts where the Creel house is- “which means he wasn’t the big bad. Because whatever the big bad is, that is what is near the source of the power. Smaug was inside the mountain.”

“Vecna’s picking people in town off one by one,” Nancy argued. “If we don’t stop him, he’s going to keep killing until the gate is open.”

“And I’m not saying that’s not important, but it’s not the big picture. We can’t focus only on him.”

“That’s what I’ve been saying,” Dustin said

“What do you propose then? We can’t just put all of our focus on finding some mysterious villain, when we know there is one.”

“We make teams,” Mike said, and Will felt something stir in him. Mike was coming back to himself. He was still a shadowed version of himself, but he was starting to be more confident, more himself. “One person in charge of taking down Vecna, El can close the gate because she’s literally the only one that can and then one group can stop whatever this thing is on the other side.”

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Mike found himself drifting over to Max.

“You okay?”

She shrugged, some song blaring out of her headphones. She lowered the volume, just a bit.

“It really freaked me out,” she said, staring down at her hands. “I don’t really want to talk about it right now, what I saw, but I was scared. I didn’t think that what I was feeling was so out of control. I thought I was managing it that the guidance counselor was just a formality, that Lucas was being a worrywart.”

“He can be like that sometimes,” he offered and he saw the ghost of a smile before it shuttered off.

“When did it let it get so out of control? Why did I let it get so out of control?”

“Hey,” he frowned. “You didn’t let it get anyway. You were hurting, you didn’t know you would feel like this, that it would be this hard to get out of. You didn’t know that at the time. How were you supposed to know some creepy man was haunting your dreams plotting to kill you.”

She barked out a laugh.

“I guess I couldn’t,” she conceded. “Damn, I was expecting you to be a jackass about it, Wheeler.”

“Not about that,” he said, “but I’ve heard I’m turning into one in general, so you’ll just have to stick around and you’ll see that soon enough.”

“Stupid,” she said and then opened her arms for a hug.

He hugged her tight.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

Will watched as everyone ambled off to different corners to work on what to do, though he could tell that most of them were just taking it as a moment of reprieve.

He appreciated the warmth, even the brief blips that they were. He was glad to be back with his friends, but things had changed. That was what happened when you were gone for half a year. It wasn’t so bad with Dustin and Lucas- they always made time to call. Dustin would go on and on about their latest campaign and Will would listen eagerly and a little enviously wishing he could be there himself. Lucas, when the phone got too tied up, had opted for writing. He wrote good letters, always answering Will’s questions and telling him all about Hawkins. He talked about his actual life too, not just DnD or worse, everything about the Upside Down.

Dustin was fascinated with it all, even now. He remembered he had tried to keep a demodog years ago, but Will could never share their enthusiasm, not in the same way. Lucas didn’t bring it up much, not in an avoidant way but in an it’s-not-happening-right now sort of way. The most he ever talked about it was when he mentioned Max, how she had been withdrawn since everything that happened last summer.

That was something Will could relate to.

Lucas wrote and told him about the basketball games and how he could always give a good account of what was happening at least since he had the best seat on the court. Will didn’t know much about basketball before that, but it sounded fun, albeit something he never considered doing before. It was a little ridiculous that he had more experience being kidnapped into an alternate dimension than he did with playing sports.

He had even tuned into a basketball game or two when he had the time, to see what Lucas was talking about, but he found he would much rather watch a game if his friend was playing.

But at home he had his family. Mom was always working, but that wasn’t new. He had El now and they had grown close but Jonathan… Jonathan was just gone. Not even retreating but never there, like he was avoiding everything. He had never been this absent, even when he was off dating Nancy or working at the newspaper or any of the other jobs he had had over the years.

He always was there to say hi, always there to let Will know he was there. But now it was like he was never in the house and when he was, he was high. Will felt guilty for how much he had taken it for granted. He tried to reach out but there was constantly this blank expression on Jonathan’s face so he stepped away to give him some time.

But now they were back in Hawkins. Mike- Mike wasn’t the same Mike as when they were kids. He didn’t know what had changed, but something had and now he was cold so much it hurt him in his chest. El was off with Max but he couldn’t blame her for that- Max was her best friend in the world and she missed her.

“Hey,” Will’s eyes snapped back into focus and he turned to see Lucas standing there. “You doing okay man?”

He nodded. “It’s all just a lot.”

Lucas nodded, grim. “I know. Wish you could have come back to something better.”

“I’m starting to think that’s impossible here.”

Lucas laughed. “No kidding. But seriously, it’s good to have you back. It hasn’t been the same without you.”

“Thanks,” he forced the words out around the lump in his throat. “I missed all you guys too,” he said, unable to keep out how earnest and true it was. For as much as everything had changed, seeing everyone, being back home, gave him a level of comfort he hadn’t known he was missing, like he had been trying to regain his footing for months now to finally be standing on solid ground.

And yet, with that sturdiness underneath his feet was the disconcerting wariness he felt, memories threatening to bubble to the surface. 

It would be poetic, this way, he thought, to finally be able to end these memories by getting rid of the source itself, himself be damned. The way he saw it, there were just some people who weren’t supposed to make it. Like in those horror movies he watched when he was a kid with Jonathan, while mom was at work because she definitely would not have approved. There were always some of the characters that were obviously going to die. He tried not to get attached to them, knowing their fate but he almost always did.

It wasn’t like he wanted to die, but he could read the writing on the wall- he had been that writing. He was like those characters. He honestly didn’t know how he was still alive, but he had a sinking feeling that he should have died, back when he was first pulled under into the Upside Down. Every bad thing that had happened was because he came back- if he had stayed he wouldn’t have caught the Mind Flayer, and he knew the Russians were responsible for what happened last summer, but he couldn’t help but feel that it was him too, that it left him, fed on him, and then used everything it learned from him for years to almost destroy Hawkins. To kill so many people.

He knew it, in his heart. He knew he was meant to die, that he was meant to die but he hadn’t, and now the universe was screaming for order to be restored.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Steve Harrington 

“Hello Steve.”

Steve looked up. “Hey Eleven. Are you okay?”

“Max said that you’re good to talk to.”

“Max hasn’t exactly been a chatty Kathy lately,” he said, folding the clothes on the floor. He had wanted something to do besides staring at the maps on the wall so he had offered to do some laundry.

“I don’t know what that means.”

“It means she hasn’t been talking much to anyone lately.”

“Oh. I guess she has not been a… chatty Kathy.”

“So what can I do you for? You can help me fold all this stuff.”

She took a shirt, but didn’t make much of an attempt at folding it.

“I am worried. I am afraid I might have made the wrong choice. I'm happy to be here, but Brenner said that I lost my powers as a sort of block to protect myself. He said that I should train with him, that he has tapes.”

“The creepy guy who kept you in the lab? I don’t know much about that guy, but I don’t really trust him.”

“But I need my powers back. I have them, I can do things again, but it’s not the same. Mike said that I was good the way I am, but I need to get them back to seal Henry away. I can’t fail this time,” she looked away, fist tightening around the flannel in her hand.

Steve lowered some jeans and frowned.

“I don’t really know much about the whole,” he waved his hand as if trying to summon the word, “superpower thing. I’ve always been caught more on the monsters-from-hell side of things, but from what I can tell, this guy sounds suspicious, and untrustworthy. You’ve learned your powers before, you’ve done it before. The power is in you.”

“But I can’t remember the lessons,” she said, frustrated. “That’s why I need the tapes, the lab”

“Well, you have the tapes, but you don’t need the lab.”

“But that’s how I learned.”

“You don’t have to be put in a terrible environment in order to change into something cool. You are cool, El. And you can do it all without. You have done it without.”

She paused and nodded. “I’ll think about it.” She hesitated before she added. “They- Mike- would also get worried about my powers, because they cause my nose to bleed.”

“They’re right, you know,” he said, looking at El. She was squinting off at the distance. “Look, I don’t know all about your powers and the,” he gestured at his face, “the nose bleeding, but if they’re saying that it isn’t safe, I’m kind of inclined to believe them.”

“I don’t know how else to do it,” she said.

“But you’re trying. I think you’d be able to do it, if it’s possible. Sometimes it's okay to be different than how you used to be. I used to be way different, back before. I was a bit of an asshole.”

She tilted her head. “What happened?”

“The Upside Down happened. Nancy happened, Jonathan. I don’t know, a crisis of conscience? I realized that I hung out with jerks for so long I was starting to become like them and I didn’t want to be.”

“Papa- Brenner was a jerk. He always talked about how much power I could have, if I just ‘applied myself.’ He made me feel very… small. And then I could fight back and he didn’t have that control over me anymore. And then he kept sending people after me, and my friends.”

“You were defending yourself. Your first priority, yeah, was to survive. You don’t just have to survive anymore. El, you can live.”

“Do you think I could turn into Henry?”

“No, El,” he said. “Honestly, I don’t think you could, because Henry was mean at heart.”

“I don’t feel bad about killing them. Or trying to” she amended. “I think maybe I’m supposed to, but I don’t.”

“Did you want to?”

“No. I felt better when they weren’t chasing me, so I guess I felt good.”

“I would be more concerned if you killed them because you enjoyed it. Henry,” he said, “he hurt people because he wanted to hurt people. Brenner did it because he liked to have that control over people. You’re a good kid, El.”

“You barely know me.”

He shrugged. “I know enough to tell.”

“You’re really nice,” El said. “I understand why they always ask you for help.”

“Oh, and El?”

“Yes?”

“If you told Max this, if you told her it was something really important, she’ll listen to you. I know she will.”

“But she has been sad. Not a chatty Kathy,”

“Yes. And she may not want to talk about some things, but the big things she will. She cares about you.”

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Mike and Dustin found Lucas and Will at the school. It was weird, abandoned like this. If he suspended his disbelief he could imagine it was the summer again, when they would all go onto the abandoned school campus to play on the monkey bars and slide on the slide because they had the whole place to themselves.

Lucas was dribbling, but he was standing in place, eyes more absent than anything.

“Hey, can I play?”

Lucas snapped to. “You don’t play basketball,” he said, voice bordering on accusing, a little suspicious. But Mike just held out his hands and he passed it.

“Sorry we didn’t make it to your game.”

He shrugged. “I sat on the bench the whole season, you didn’t know this’d be the time I’d actually get to play.”

Mike huffed. “That shouldn’t have mattered. We’re your friends. We could have just asked Eddie to move it up earlier. It was shitty of us and I’m sorry”

“I don’t even like basketball that much.”

“It doesn’t matter. You asked us to be there and we weren’t. You’ve always been there for us, no questions asked,” Mike aimed and missed the hoop entirely

Lucas waited as the ball slowly bounced to him before he caught it and then sighed. “I just wanted us to have a normal year, you know? Escape the bullying,” he jumped and the basketball soared through the basket. “Eddie’s great but not all of us can just brush off what other people say like he can. I thought basketball might be better, but turns out those guys are jerks too.”

Mike shook his head. “You're too harsh on yourself.” 

“Maybe,” Lucas said, “but maybe that's what friends are for, to stop us from doing that.” 

Mike felt transparent, like Lucas could see right through him.

“Maybe,” he said absently. “I'm going to go grab some water.”

He walked over to fountain and drank, debating whether he wanted tk drone himself in the water.

“Are you ans Lucas cool?” Will asked.

“Hopefully,” he said. “I think he forgives me…”

“Of course he does, you're a great friend Mike. You just were a bit off, but the rest-”

“You keep saying I’m this good- I’m not,” Mike said. “I push everybody away.”

“Mike-”

“No. You called me out on it and El called me out on it. Lucas had that basketball game and we just blew it off because we wanted to play DnD. I mean we tried to move it, but we didn’t try that hard to convince Eddie. We could have asked him to move it earlier, we could have done so many things, but we didn’t and we missed it.

“And I try- I was there with both of you through all of this but its just-” he took a deep breath, and he sounded like he was about to cry. “You and El- all of us-, we keep almost dying, like, all the time, and I remember what it was like to lose you- both of you- and I can’t- I can’t do that again.  Sometimes I think it would be better if Lucas and Dustin left too, just to get it over with. Because it would be better that way,” he said, crying. “If we ended it then I could just pretend, you know, that you’re out there, and you’re happy and I never have to think that I’ll have to see you die.

“I get it now Will,” he said, looking over at him with glittering eyes, “why you wanted us to play DnD last summer. I wanted to grow up, you know, be older. I thought things would get better but they’re all still shit. Dustin and Erica got kidnapped by Russians, we thought Hopper died, and he was an adult, you know, and he was dead and Billy he wasn’t much older than us and he died. We’re all almost dying all the time and I just can’t keep doing that anymore,” he sobbed

“I’m really, really sorry,” he said, “I’ve been a jerk- an asshole. I’m so sorry-”

“Hey,” Dustin said and Mike turned, shocked.

“I’m sorry,” he started but Lucas shook his head

“Don’t man.”

“Why didn’t you tell us about all that?”

Mike ran his hands through his hair. “You all seemed like you were dealing with it all so well. You were always jumping into danger. The year before you two were off hunting down demodogs in the junkyard and last year, Dustin, you were cracking Russian codes with Robin and Steve in the ice cream shop.”

“Are you kidding me man, I was scared shitless. I’m basically shitting myself right now!” Dustin exclaimed gesturing around at their crazy town. 

“Seriously,” Lucas said. “I think about this stuff all the time. Sometimes when a room’s too dark I think that a Demogorgon is going to come climbing out of the walls. And I’m scared all the time that it will all come back. I see every horrible thing this town has to offer and I’m scared we're never going to get out of it.”

“It was easier, before El closed the portal the first time,” Mike said slowly, “because it seemed more exciting, like an adventure, but last year when it was happening again I felt like, were never getting out of this, ever.”

“I see it.,” Will said quietly. “All the time. Even though it’s not in me anymore I can’t stop thinking about it and how it almost hurt everybody. How it used me to hurt everybody. I just wanted things to be normal last summer.”

“And I want things to be normal again but they won’t be.”

“No, they won’t. But they’ll be a new normal. We can know what is out there but we still have each other’s back. That’s what a party does. They stick together, no matter what. That’s what best friends do too.”

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

El Hopper

El had a team around her now, to help with the superpower issue.

Eddie eyed her, kind of suspicious. “You’re, like, the girl everyone’s been talking about. The one with the superpowers.”

She hesitated and then nodded. It was true. Dustin had told her they had to give Eddie the quick “recap” of what happened. It made sense.

“I am learning to get them back.”

He nodded. “You’re kind of like a magic user in DnD. What kind of magic would it classify as,” he wondered absentmindedly.

“None,” Max said. “She doesn’t use magic. She’s naturally bad ass.”

“What do you mean type,” El asked though.

“Well, in DnD, there are two different kinds of magic- arcane- that’s more of a sort of war magic, fighting all that- and there is divine, which is kind of powered by a higher power.”

“I move things with my mind,” she offered.

“Oh, like the force.”

“What’s the force?” she asked quizzically

“Oh no,” Max started.

“What’s the force? Have you not seen Star Wars?”

“I have seen Star Trek.”

Eddie groaned.

“I like Star Trek,” she insisted. He could not judge her for not knowing things if he did not even know Star Trek. It was on TV for everyone to see.

“It’s good, sure,” he said. “But it isn’t the same. Star Trek is more like exploring, like a quest. Star Wars is this epic battle. Good and Evil. There are these people, Jedi, who can move things with their mind. And they also have these lightsabers, which are like laser swords.”

“Laser swords?”

“It’s kind of hard to explain that part if you don’t see it, I’ll admit. After all of this is over we can all rent it and have a movie night.

She thought that over and smiled to herself. It would be very nice to do that with all her friends. She could probably even get Jonathan and Will to watch it with her. Maybe even Argyle- he seemed like he would like a movie.

“But, anyways,” Eddie continued, “these jedi feel the energy of the universe and use it.”

“Like divine magic,” she pieced together.

He snapped his fingers. “Exactly. Both groups are super powerful- or they can be- but they have to train a lot to do that. What did they have you do?” He asked eyes lighting up with excitement.

“I used the sensory deprivation tank. And I crushed a soda can.”

“First of all, that soda can thing?- sick. But for the first why-”

“It helps me to focus my powers. I can find people like that.”

He hummed. “So they only taught you how to control your powers in very controlled environment?”

“Yes. In the lab.”

Eddie made a face, like her saying that upset him. “But you’re a person right, you’ve used your powers outside all the time.”

“Yes,” she said. “I could. I did a lot.”

“Well, let’s do that now.”

“I'm weaker right now,” she said.

“El lost her powers when that thing got in her leg and bit her, right?” Steve said.

“In her leg?” Eddie looked sick

“Does that mean that Vecna has her powers?”

“It must be,” Max said. “Look he’s been there for how many years and he wasn’t able to open doors then, not like this. The gates were always opened on our end first, right? El opened the first one. It can’t be a coincidence that after she loses her powers he can suddenly do what she did. But then he joins forces with the Mind Flayer- he was hunting El and he thought well if we can’t beat her we can at least take this.”

“El was able to tap into her core powers on her own in a crisis, which means that she still has access to them. This is just a mental block he put in there.”

“If we were with Brenner he would make me watch it on five different screens in an immersion pool,” El said.

“Lucky for us,” Steve said, “we can fast forward and there are several of us.”

Eddie and Argyle watched the tapes, taking note of anything different.

She glanced at the videos, but nothing really stood out, aside from Henry.

Nancy shook her head. “Venca isn’t some sad, misunderstood kid. He’s not just punishing people because he thinks they deserve it- he enjoys it. He doesn’t have to kill like that, to torture them like that. He does that because he enjoys pain, he gets some weird, sick, twisted pleasure out of it.”

El sat across  from her silently, absorbing everything she said.

She couldn’t stop thinking about Henry, about Papa. She wanted to believe him when he said Papa was a liar, because when he talked to her and all that, he used nice words, but something inside her said that he wasn’t a nice man. Her brain wanted to just assume that because Henry wasn’t Papa, he was the good one in the story. It hurt to think that there were two bad people- bad in different ways, but still bad.

“Brenner was bad because he didn’t treat any of you like people,” Max said, pausing the video. “It was more like you were lab rats. But he didn’t physically hurt you. But that doesn’t make him any better. Henry he was nice, he treated you like a person, acted like he cared- he might have actually felt that for real- but he was selfish and mean.”

“But I trusted both of them.”

“And how is that your fault? You didn’t know better, El. You were a little kid then. And it doesn’t make you bad or stupid because you wanted to believe the people around you weren’t trying to hurt you, that you wanted them to be nice.”

Max took a deep breath. “I thought, sometimes, that maybe if Billy had lived we would have been friends and we would have bonded, like a real brother and sister.” She shook her head. “I want to believe that that would have happened because he made the right choice at the end, but I know the truth. We wouldn’t, because Billy was an asshole and bad stuff may have happened with his dad to make him the way he was, but he chose to keep hurting people. He didn’t have to, but he chose to be a bully and beat people up.”

“I don’t want to be like that,” El said. “There was this girl, in California. She was so mean, I hit her in the face with a roller skate.”

Max choked. “You what?”

“I wanted to hurt her worse though, because she hurt me first and because I wanted her to stop.”

“Hey, you did it because you didn’t want to be treated badly. And you learned in Nevada that if things were really desperate you could make your powers work, but you didn’t use them at the rink because in your heart you knew that wasn’t what was needed at the time. Those guys were jackasses and you’re nothing like them.”

“How do you know, though? Maybe I will be when I get older. Maybe even when I get my powers back all the way.”

“Because you care about people, El. You don’t only care about you. You have love inside of you, something neither of those bozos had any of because they were so busy trying to make themselves happy.”

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

Will felt better after his heart to heart with his friends, but he was starting to feel it again. The way he started to shrink into himself, curl up like he wanted to disappear. He shouldn’t want to- they were his best friends and he had missed them like crazy, but all he wanted to do was become small and hide away until he didn’t exist anymore, like he was twelve again hiding in the Upside Down. Like if he breathed too loud he’d trample a forest, like every move he ever made was just too big, too much. But he had felt like that before all of this. It was just easier to blame it all on the Upside Down.

He drifted over towards El who was staring at a pop can.

“What are you trying to do?” he asked.

“Crush it,” she said, frowning. “It does not want to work. I cannot figure out how to turn it on and off. I watched the videos. Papa- Brenner always said not to use emotions when we use our powers but Henry said the opposite. Brenner didn’t have powers, he didn’t know what it was like,” she worried her lip. “But Henry did too much with that anger. And I was angry when I opened the portal in the first place.”

“Well, maybe there’s an in-between.”

“How?” she said.

He chewed his lip. “I don’t know. You’ve used your powers other times, right? Mike and them said you used it at the school. And you used it to help Hopper, right? When you protected Hopper in Nevada, you felt things right?”

“Yes,” she said, furrowing her brows. “He is my dad, I love him. I needed to protect him.”

Will nodded. “But that feeling doesn’t overwhelm everything or make you lose control like Henry did. It’s a strong feeling, but you get it in control. Maybe not feeling anything is too much control, and it makes it hard to use your powers, too much emotions makes it hard to control them.”

She nodded. “I was thinking of that. When I was in the bunker with Hopper I felt that, I wanted to help him. I was angry but I mostly wanted to keep him safe.”

“You’ll figure it out. You were the one who learned how to use your powers the first time.”

“They taught me.”

“But they didn’t do it for you, you did. All they did was give you ideas.”

“Like Jedi masters,” she nodded solemnly.

“What?”

“From Star Wars.”

Will looked at her, confused. “When did you see Star Wars?”

“I have not yet, but Eddie told me about it. He said I am like a Jedi with my powers.”

“You are. Wow, I can’t believe I never realized that. That’s so cool. You can dress up like one for Halloween.”

She smiled. “We can both go together.”

They hadn’t gone trick-or-treating last Halloween because they didn’t know anyone and they didn’t want to be walking around the neighborhood aimlessly. It just felt kind of lonely. And Will would have been lying if he said he wasn’t still put off over what had happened the Halloween previous.

But now, he imagined their next Halloween. They’d be sophomores and all of their friends were here and they could go together.

Will clung to that feeling, wanting that all so bad.

He opened his mouth to speak, but was cut off the the sound of a large thump coming from the room over.

They rushed through the doorway to find Steven hunched over on the floor.

Steve was having trouble breathing. He was doubled over on the floor of the Byer’s spare room wheezing, trying to get air in his lungs. Dustin was there, telling Ms. Byers about thier journey to the Upside Down. Steve looked like he would have protested, but he couldn't think of any other explanation. He had been down there the longest- not by much, but enough for all that to accumulate in his lungs.

Mrs. Byers pursed her lips. “We need to do what we did before.”

“So we're just going to tie up four teenagers and hope they don’t break out?” Dustin asked, incredulous.

“When I was with Billy,” El said, “I saw it was a solid thing that was inside him.”

Joyce nodded. “It’s just small stuff. We need to drive it out before it can get its hooks in,” he nodded.

“I can help,” El said, looking up. “I am still getting my powers, but the block, I could feel it, like a” she frowned., unable to find the word.

“Like a sickness?” Will said and she nodded.

“I was able to get that. I can get it out of them too.”

Will watched, frozen where he stood as his mom herded the teenagers out to the shed. Steve had sounded so bad

“Get it all,” he said, shaking.

“Will-”

He looked at all of them- Steve, Nancy, Eddie, and Robin. “Don’t wait. I- when it infiltrated, I would black out for hours end up in completely different places. We can’t keep you out of the danger zones if you take yourselves there.”

“Billy did too,” Max said. “he would be gone for whole days. I didn’t think much of it, but now-”

They gestured towards the door.

Will watched them all shaking his head. “I can’t.”

“Hey,” Mike said, worried look on his face. “We’ll just stay out here, go over the information we have.”

Will nodded and went over to the table.

The living room was again reminiscent of the map of Hawkins, only this was all contained to one room and it wasn’t all over the floor.

They had blown up the map as best they could on the wall- the fresh coat of white paint they had laid down before they left for California now completely dirtied. Maybe if they survived all of this they could make it into some sort of mural, though he wasn’t sure how they would be able to do that without the whole thing being tainted by the memories of everyone who had died. But maybe that was just Hawkins.

“I can feel the Upside Down,” El said. “I feel it in my hands, in my head, I can tell when it's nearby.” Her eyes slid over to him. “You can too," she said to Will.

He nodded.

“I think I can help them. I can pull it out of them.”

“Then help.”

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

El Hopper

She let herself into the shed.

“El? What are you doing in here?”

“I can help,” she said. She put on the noise cancelling headphones and the blindfold and she could feel it. The Upside Down was all connected, all alive, so she could feel its mind, even in these little pieces. She could distinguish them from Nancy and Robin and Eddie and Steve and so she worked one at a time.

The space was all black, the mirror of water there and there stood Nancy in pastel, a weird thing to see in the darkness.

Nancy frowned. “El?”

“Hi, Nancy.”

“Are you here?”

“I am in the shed, yes,” she nodded.

Nancy nodded slowly, taking it all in. “What are you thinking?” she asked curiously.

“I am trying to find the Mind Flayer. It is trying to grab your mind. You know it. You saw it with Will. You might be able to remember.”

Nancy nodded again, even slower, as if her mind was coming back to her, slowly.

“The hotter it gets, the more it goes to the surface,” she said, getting to her feet.

The black rippled and then they were in Nancy’s room. It didn’t look exactly like it did three years ago, when El was there, but it was similar enough. Her eyes darted over all the pretty things Nancy had- fluffy stuffed animals, shiny jewelry, cute dresses. Nancy smiled knowingly.

“Mike told me about how you all snuck in here to get my stuff.”

“Yes. I borrowed your dress.”

“I’m glad you could use it. Did you like it?”

“It was pretty,” she said easily enough, but the casual conversation did not belay their caution. They were both watching sharply for any other movement, Nancy’s eyes were shrewd as she made her way to the dresser. “Max and I went to the mall last summer.”

“Despite everything that happened there, I kind of still wish we had it,” Nancy said. “It was pretty exciting, you know, for Hawkins.”

“I liked the ice cream,” she said and she could see something at the edge of the dresser starting to form, like a shadow, but not.

“Yeah,” Nancy said easily and then she spun around, gun in her hand, and aimed.

It was standing there behind Nancy, a dark, formless shadow looming there, but Nancy didn’t hesitate, firing shot after shot after shot.

“Go, El,” she said, and the bullets didn’t harm it, but it loosened its grip on Nancy’s mind and El ripped it free, screaming as the sheer force brought her back to the present.

She raised her blindfold in time to see Joyce and Hopper catching it in a jar. Hopper looked at her worried but she just nodded and didn’t wait before she went back under.

It was all about strategy. Nancy had to be first because she was the most likely to understand what to do, to see if it would work. Steve had it the worst so he would have to go last, and she knew he could handle it. She went to Eddie next.

He was sitting in a small house- the trailer, she assumed.

“Hello Eddie.”

“Woah.” Eddie almost fell off the mind-steps. He blinked confused. “Who are you?”

“El,” she said and his face lit up in recognition.

“Never thought I’d be on the receiving end of some of your psychic powers.”

“I’m taking the Mind Flayer. It is hiding here.”

He gestured around. “Good luck, there’s nothing here,” he said. His mind was becoming obnoxiously bright, like there were a hundred lamps and El could feel the heat starting to seep in. Joyce was not kidding about the heat.

“It is here,” she insisted. “Have you checked everything?”

He frowned and then realization dawned on his face. He led her into the house into the back room. She watched as he dug around and reached for a metal case, and he opened it.

It was smaller than Nancy’s, all cramped up in the box, but she grabbed at it as well and hurtled it out of his mind.

Eddie looked dumbstruck. “It thought I wouldn’t look in there.”

“It latches onto your mind. It is trying to learn from what happened with me and Nancy.” 

And then she was gone.

She jumped to Robin next. She was wearing a green and white outfit with some sort of instrument in her hands.

“The Mind Flayer is hiding,” she said, taking a seat next to her on the bleachers. “It’s learning.”

Robin had been about to take a breath in, but startled at El’s appearance beside her.

“You scared the shit out of me,” she said, catching her breath. “Where was it?”

“Behind Nancy and then in this box for Eddie. It doesn’t want to be found.”

“The only place it wouldn’t look” she said, “is right in front of me,” and then she blew out through her instrument. “It wanted me to breathe in.”

El grabbed it gratefully and jumped out.

Steve was the last one. She took off her blindfold and walked across the shed to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. He was not looking well. He was sweating a lot with the heat and Dustin and Lucas had said he had been attacked by demobats in the Upside Down. She could see the purple of the bruise around his neck, even in the dim light. She pulled the blindfold back on and plunged into his mind.

He was standing alone, nothing and no one as far as the eye could see.

“Hello Steve.”

“Hey El,” he turned to look at her. “We going to take this thing down together?”

“Yes,” she said.

The place here wasn’t a room or anywhere in particular. It was just empty, a long way in every direction. He had a baseball bat in his hands covered in twisted nails. It kind of looked like they were on the shore or something, but at sunset, there were Christmas lights in the trees behind them.

He reached into his pocket, turning a lighter around in his fingers.

“When you see it,” he said, staring at the pretty shore. “Grab it, El. No matter if it sneaks into my mind-body or whatever this is, okay?”

“I will hurt you.”

“No, you won’t,” he said. “You won’t. I promise you El.”

“I hurt people before.”

“You didn’t hurt Nancy or Eddie or Robin, right?

“But that wasn’t like this.”

“I trust you El. You’re not a monster,” he smiled. “Team up of the century, am I right? We usually never get to do these things together,” he said, with a big grin that made her feel a bit better, like there wasn’t this horrible, heavy sense of dread looming over the both of them.

“Bitchin’,” she said and he laughed, delighted, so bright it almost offset the shadow.

“Steve,” she said quietly. She could see it, creeping over his shoulders, slowly wrapping its tendrils around his neck, slithering slowly, like a python from one of those nature documentaries. It must have been under his clothes, where his wound was. They hadn’t thought to check. This was his mind, he could conjure anything except, apparently, the ability to make his injuries go away.

He gave her a shallow smile and he lifted up the lighter.

“Kill it,” he said and his thumb struck the hammer and the lighter sparked to life. The monster roared, a sound that twisted like the shriek of the wind, and it stretched out of corporeal form, like a scared cat's fur standing on end. It started grabbing tighter, seizing around his throat, but Steve was holding firm despite the choking, his hand unwavering as he tried to hold the lighter to it, so close he was in danger of burning his own skin.

Any hesitation El felt disappeared and she screamed, pulling it from him with all her might. She yanked at its arms first, trying to get him to breathe, but they were loosened, not fully but enough for Steve to take in a deep breath and then he dropped, detangling it from himself and then he spun, his bat in hand and swung it at it, hard.

The thing screeched, still trying to cling to him but El pulled harder. It was unraveling from his legs and there was red on Steve’s shirt where it tore from his stomach.

He looked at her, the thing still holding firm and he nodded, sweat a slick sheen on his forehead, and El let go of any semblance of restraint she had and she tore the last of it away.

She surged back to herself, falling on her hands and knees and she yanked everything off her face and across the room. She blinked and took everything in, her mind hurtling to process everything, the last few seconds her eyes had seen catching up to her brain. Nancy running to Jonathan and standing in his arms at the corner of the room while Joyce and Hopper tried to catch the bits of Mind Flayer floating in the space of the room. Robin and Eddie making it over to them, shaken and terrified.

And there was Steve.

She watched as the bond between Steve and the monster snapped, his chest heaving briefly before dropping back down like someone had used a defibrillator on him and then he fell back against the chair.

His body started seizing and there was this horrible gurgling sound and then his stomach started bleeding profusely.

“Steve!” Robin screamed and she tore away from Eddie to run over to him just as Hopper and Joyce caught the last of the Mind Flayer.

“Do you have a first aid kit? We need to stop the bleeding.”

Nancy was there in a second and they were pressing down on the wound. Steve’s eyes were open but he was still coming to.

“We need to take him to the house,” Jonathan said.

Nancy shook her head. “Not unless we can keep the pressure on him.” Her eyes were big and wet and wide. “He’s bleeding a lot Jonathan.”

Hopper and Joyce were stripping out of their suits tucking them in the plastic bin and taping it up as tight as they could.

“Forget bandages, he needs a hospital,” Robin said, hands shaking after he bled through another wad of gauze.

“I can help,” she offered.

Nancy looked at her and nodded. Handing her some new gauze. “I need to run and get something,” she said and then she was sprinting for the house.

El held the gauze to the wound, feeling heat as more blood came out.

She had never been in a situation like this. No one was hurt, not like this. At Starcourt, people died but no one was dying. It was an instant and then it was over. With Hopper and Billy it was over. It was not prolonged.

“We can’t wait for an ambulance,” Jonathan was saying, “it will take too long.”

“We still have the U-Haul,” Hopper said, “we transfer him out there and then we drive like hell to the hospital.”

Everybody else was pouring out of the house, their eyes wide.

“What’s happening,” Dustin said, trying to crane over the adults to see.

“We need to get Steve to the hospital,” Eddie said.

“Hey dude,” Steve said, bleary eyed. His head lolled to the side until he found her.

He gave her this airy sort of light smile, like he was still waking up. “You did it. Woo.” And then he slumped down. El’s eyes burned.

Joyce stepped in to take over and then she felt someone bigger, more solid pull her close.

“Hey kiddo,” Hopper said. “It’s okay, yeah?”

She buried her face in his chest as he held her tight.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Lucas Sinclair

It all had happened so fast

One moment they had been waiting. And then there had been some noise, so Dustin had gone outside.

Next thing he knew the door was banging backwards against the wall.

“Out of the way,” Ms. Byers said

She was walking in a staggered way, waddling, almost, the way you did when you were carrying something with someone, trying to stay even so you didn’t drop it. It only took a half a second for it to all catch up and piece together in his mind, that Ms. Byers was walking like she was carrying something because she was carrying something.

Someone, Lucas realized with dread as he caught a glimpse of Steve's signature bouffant. They carried Steve into the living room by his armpits and his feet. The kids were all on their feet scattering backwards as they watched. Jonathan had Steve’s feet and they carried him fast into the house.

They brought him into the kitchen. Lucas watched as they laid him on the ground. He was actively bleeding so much so it looked like it was just as bad as it had been a few days ago. These weren’t leaking or something, these had been freshly ripped open.

Blood was pouring out of Steve’s mouth.

“Someone get my first aid kit,” Ms. Byers called out. “It’s right in the bedroom.” Robin looked around frantic, but Lucas knew where to look because he knew this place as well as his own home. He left, ducking into the room, grabbing the kit.

Ms. Byers looked up at him briefly and gave him a nod. “Thank you Lucas.”

Lucas watched helplessly, stepping back away from Steve to let them work.

They were cutting off his shirt like they were in one of those hospital shows. He could hear Dustin’s voice in the back of his mind going about a mile a minute, but he wasn’t registering a word of it, he wasn’t so sure Dustin was either, both of their minds consumed with the image of Steve laid out on the linoleum floor, bleeding to death.

The blood from his mouth seemed to stop, which was good. But the blood didn’t look like his. It was older, black, and congealed.

“What is that stuff?”

Robin froze and looked at it, a bit sick. “That might have been some of the demobat blood,” she said. Nancy’s head shot up and she was at Steve’s side in an instant, wiping it away with a paper towel and dumping it in a glass jar.

“El is there anymore-” Mind Flayer she didn’t have to say

She shook her head. “It’s his blood.”

Thin strings of gunk lifted from his mouth and the bits on the floor and she swiped them all into the jar.

“We need to check everything on our way over here.”

“Isn’t coughing up blood indicative of internal injuries?” Dustin asked, voice finally breaking through, but it was unable to divorce itself from the hysteria.

“We can’t check that right now.” Hopper said as Joyce got to threading her needle.

When the blood was wiped away, it all didn’t look too bad, but it was all pooling back just as fast as they were clearing him away.

“Steve ingested demobat blood?”

“Not intentionally.”

“That stuff only dies by fire.”

“Does it have to be fire-fire, or can it be burned by acid,” Dustin asked. “Theres acid in the stomach, it could burn it all up.

“Will had it in his body.”

“He was breathing it, not eating,” Mike said. “He coughed it up, meaning lungs, not gut,” and Lucas made a face, never wanting to be that familiar with their friend’s bodily functions. “I think eating it is different,” Mike continued, “besides El got it all out.”

El was there now, watching it all with terrified eyes.

Lucas didn’t like to just sit around and wait for something to get fixed. He saw a problem he just got up and fixed it.

He filtered back to go outside, and he saw Eddie and the others frantically unloading the U-Haul to put Steve in. It wasn’t ideal to move him twice, but they could leave him on the dirty, dark floor of the shed.

He stepped in alongside Eddie and Max, unloading the last of everything before Steve was whisked back out, slightly more stable than before.

Then the adrenaline crashed, and he could feel the way his body shook.

He stepped away, back into the house to regain his composure.

The door opened and-

“Oh.”

He looked up to see Max standing there, hand on the door handle.

“Sorry,” she said. “Do you want…?”

He shook his head and she came over tentatively.

Max looked at him. “Everybody gave me my space. You did too, but you checked in with me, you made the effort, I never felt like you had abandoned me, even when I was pushing you away,” she admitted. “How do you do that?”

“I didn’t do anything special” he shrugged resting his back against the wall. “I just- I like plans, you know? We did one for the Demogorgon,” and he watched as the ghost of a smile crossed her lips at the memory of them at the old junkyard, talking on top of the bus. “I can work with a plan, but just sitting around waiting for something to change or hoping it will get better- that’s not me.”

“You rode eight miles on your bike to warn us. You always act as the scout. You keep us safe, first line of defense and all that.”

“I’m just helping my friends.”

“I think we take you for granted, because you’re always there. We never had to wonder what we would be like if we didn’t have someone watching our backs.

“I guess what I’m trying to say is thank you, Lucas,” Max said. And she reached forward and held his hand.

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

El Hopper

The hospital was a horrible place. It reminded her too much of the lab, though there were more people here, and she could leave.

They spent forever sitting in the uncomfortable chairs before a nurse came out.

“For Steve?”

They all righted themselves.

“He’s okay. Some serious injuries, but he will be fine. He’s awake, though the doctors have some questions about the animals who attacked him.

“Can he have visitors?”

“Only one or two at a time.”

After a lot of debate, they decided to let the last two people he had seen before passing out go in. She walked into the room with Robin and he gave her the same smile he had a few hours ago, right before he passed out.

“Hey El. Thanks for saving my life back there.”

Her eyes burned and she felt hot tears streaming down her face.

“Hey,” he said, “I’m okay. You did good El.”

She sobbed and he pulled her close in a hug. “Hey you did what you needed to do, okay? If you hadn’t done it, that thing would have killed me in some completely horrible way, like twisted my insides inside-out.”

“You lost a lot of blood.”

“So I heard, but I’ll make more,” he said. “I heard you helped them to keep most of my blood in me. Your nose didn’t even bleed once.”

She lifted her and to her face, it was wet, but not red. “You’re really getting the hang of your powers, huh?”

“Like a Jedi?”

He cracked a smile. “Yeah, like a Jedi,” he relaxed against his pillow. “You like Star Wars?”

“I have not seen it.”

He gasped. “Even I’ve seen Star Wars.”

“I watched Star Trek.”

“Star Wars is way different. You’re lucky I happen to work at a very fine movie-renting establishment, along with this cool chick, Robin, you might know her.”

Robin chuckled. “I don’t know how cool she is dingus, but she might be able to help you out,” Her eyes were soft with sleep. She must have just woken up, she still looked so exhausted.

“How are the others doing, El?”

“They’re okay,” she said. “You had it the worst.”

“But the deaths?”

“Not yet.”

He nodded. “You should go and get some sleep. You don’t need to worry about me. I’m feeling better already, okay?”

Robin moved into the seat beside Steve’s bed instead of the one at the corner of the room.

“They let you stay in here?” he breathed, trying to sit up.

“More or less,” she said. “It’s the wild west in Hawkins right now, I don’t know if you’ve noticed. They’re kind of playing fast-and-loose with the rules. I also think they think were like, high school sweethearts or something.”

“Aw babe,” he said, reaching over to mess up her hair.

“Don’t you even think about it Harrington I have had like, negative eight hours of sleep at this point.”

“Negative, huh?”

“Semi-possession does that, you know.”

“Whatever you say, sugar muffin.”

“Steve I swear, I will smother you with a pillow right now if you call me that again, near-death experience and the police standing on the other side of that door be damned.”

He laughed and winced. “Ow Robin, stop making me laugh.”

“Then stop making the joke so easy to set up.”

🕕

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Chief Calvin Powell

“Steve Harrington has been admitted to the hospital,” Florence said

Chief Powell’s head shot up,yanking his eyes away from where it had been staring at his notes trying to make some sense of all of this and coming up short.

But this, this was a lead.

He had heard from Claudia Henderson that Steve Harrington had been associating with Dustin Henderson, and he also had connections to Nancy Wheeler and Jonathan Byers. And now he was in the hospital.

“Did they say what for?”

She shook her head. “No, just that’s bad and he’s barely holding on.”

He exchanged a glance with Callahan and then he was reaching for his keys and booking it down to the hospital.

Despite all the death as of late, and the “gas leak,” the hospital was fairly empty.

He flashed his badge out of habit to the receptionist, but everyone knew who he was. “Steve Harrington?”

“Second floor.” 

They took the stairs, Callahan rattling off all the possible states ans injuries that may have happened to Harrington and then they turned into the waiting room.

Chief Powell stopped in his tracks, Deputy Callahan right at his heels. Both of them froze as if they were seeing a ghost. They were seeing one.

“Well damn,” he said. “You look like absolute shit.”

“It’s been a while, hasn’t it?” Hopper said with a half-smile. He looked worse for the wear and he was standing lopsided. But the color was back in his skin and the bruises were starting to heal.

It was that that broke their stupor and Chief Powell crossed the space between them in a few steps and wrapped his arms solidly around him, Deputy Callahan following not a few seconds later.

“We missed you Hop. This town is a shitshow,” Powell said.

Hopper closed his eyes and hugged them back. “You don’t even know the half of it.”

Powell pulled away to look at him. “Actually, I’d like to know. I know this might not be an ideal time, because you're standing in the middle of a hospital looking like you escaped from a Russian prison, and you're not even admitted, but this town is going through some crazy stuff.”

“People are just shooting up in the sky and twisting like crunched-up pretzels,” Callahan said, lacking any kind of delicacy. “We haven’t been able to narrow it down to anyone yet. We thought it was that Munson kid, but it wasn’t.”

Hopper frowned. “We heard a bit of it from Nevada.”

“You heard about it?” Chief Powell asked, confused.

“Yeah,” he said, “the kids have been talking to us over the radio. Some high-powered transistor stuff. I don’t really understand it all.”

“The kids…” he trailed off, before his eyes blew wide. “The DnD kids?”

“Will Byer’s friends,” he said and he could see the dots connecting but not quite for them. So close. “Those ones.” He pointed at the kids filling up the waiting room chairs.

“Hop, and I mean this with the utmost respect because you just came back from the dead and all,” Callahan said, “but what the fuck is going on?”

“You’re not going to believe me when I tell you.

So they stood there as Hopper recounted everything that had happened since 1983.

They looked shell shocked. “So you adopted a girl with telekinesis,” Chief Powell said in disbelief.

“Like the X-men,” Callahan confirmed

“And there’s a portal open to another dimension which opened, closed,” Powell looked back down at his notes, “and then partially reopened last year, which caused the mall to explode and dozens of people to die over the last few years?”

“And the government is involved, sometimes.”

“Yeah. That basically sums it up,” Hopper said, leaning back in his chair. “Welcome to Hawkins.”

“Shit. So these kids have been- I don’t know.”

“Chief,” Callahan said, face morphing into one of horror, “we really fucked it up with that public forum.”

“Damn it,” Powell said, dropping his head in his hands.

“Wait what happened at the forum?”

“It’s a real jocks versus outcasts thing,” Callahan said, “except the outcasts are in a satanic DnD club that is killing people all over town. Though, to be fair, I’m pretty sure Jason would have shouted that shit whether or not there was a police-sanctioned meeting or not.”

“And then he was killed. Or targeted,” chief Powell said with a grimace

Callahan shook his head. “I never picked Jason as someone who had enough demons for this to happen to. I mean, I guess his girlfriend just died. right, this thing is preying on people with you know… instabilities.”

“Emotional vulnerabilities,” Nancy said primly. Chief Powell blinked. He hadn't seen her approach, but the space wasn't that big and she had probably heard everything Hopper had said. Not that it mattered since she apparently had known the whole time.

Chief Powell shook his head. “We’ve all got shit going on. This Vecna guys just seems especially good at rooting it out.”

Callahan nodded sullenly.

“We need to get back to work,” Nancy said resolutely, and at her word, everyone got up to do last rounds.

Chief Powell nodded ans he and Callahan went back to the Byers place to wait it out there.

Hopper had been very adamant about everybody checking in, and since he was still recovering, he had been manning the radio, checking in every couple of hours to track where everybody was and recording it down on his chart.

Dustin radioed before he even reached out, a crackling sounding thing, just really overhearing their conversation.

“Damn it,” Hopper groused, pulling himself upright. He hopped on one leg over to the couch where his crutches were.

“What’s going on?” Callahan asked

“Henderson just radioed. Sounds like they just saw someone heading into the hot zone.”

Robin was already there tossing him his keys after he slung his coat over his shoulders. “We’re heading there now.”

“I’m sending over backup.”

“Yeah,” he said. “See if they can bother to bring the tape player,” he said and they were out the door.

It had taken surprisingly little teeth-pulling to get him ans Callahan onboard with this whole thing. A lot of why do we have to wear the cassette player, why do we need to listen to music, why can’t we just shoot this motherfucker out?  All valid questions, but they honestly they didn’t have time to deal with all that. Hopper wasn’t going to wait around trying to convince them.

“Did they say where they were?” Robin asked, peering out the windows.

“I guess it’s wherever shit’s hitting the fan.”

“Fuck,” Hopper said with passion and then he was out of the car, Robin right behind him saying the crossroads over the radio.

Turns out they didn’t have to worry about their cassette tapes because someone was already dead.

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jonathan Byers

It was 2 AM and Jonathan could feel his skin buzzing against his bones.

They had gotten the all-clear on Steve’s health, which was a relief, but he wasn’t able to come down from it. It was like the night they fought the Demogorgon in his house or anything with Starcourt, only this tension had been going on for days. He wasn’t sure what it was. Maybe it was all the blood pooled on the kitchen floor that got to him, he wasn’t sure.

Maybe it was the fact that he had been avoiding talking to Nancy one-on-one and she had definitely noticed.

Maybe he was just on edge because he hadn’t had a joint in days.

As soon as he had called Nancy and she had told him about the new set of murders, he knew he couldn’t allow himself to be distracted. He had pulled Argyle aside that night and handed everything he had on him over.

“Can I ask you a favor?” 

Argyle watched him carefully. “Yeah man, of course.”

He pushed the baggie into his hands, quick so he couldn’t change his mind. “Take this. If I ask for them just- don’t give them to me.”

“Are you sure?”

He nodded, because he was, even if he didn’t want to be doing this. “Because I’m not going to want to deal with whatever’s going on in Hawkins, but I’m going to have to.”

Argyle nodded slowly. He had been thrown off since the news of what was happening in Hawkins broke, but he continued to be steady.

A part of him had known the day would come to this at some point. Because a part of him knew the weed was a temporary fix, but that one day he would be ready to let go of it, and work on standing on his own two feet again. But he had hoped it would be accompanied by mind-numbing banality, not cross-dimensional horrors.

But now he needed it.

Everyone had split and it hadn’t been hard to find Argyle- they were sharing a room for the time being.

“I changed my mind,” he said as soon as the door was closed. “I need my stuff.”

“I don’t have it.”

He blinked. “What do you mean? You couldn’t have gone through all of it.” It would have been impossible for him to. They had been glued to each other for days. He would have noticed.

“I didn’t. I got rid of it,” Argyle looked at him, really looked at him. “You were right to stop when they brought up the murders, so I got rid of it.”

“You shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yes, I should have,” Argyle said, and his voice was serious, something Jonathan had never heard from him before. “I was right. Smoking to shoot the shit, relax, even for the pain, it's whatever, but his? This doesn’t help.”

“It does,” he insisted, but the words sounded weak even to his ears.

“Even you don’t believe that,” Argyle said, not unkindly. “Look, I had a cousin, and a couple years back, he lost his daughter. She tripped and drowned in a swimming pool. Fucking terrible. He was completely destroyed. His marriage broke down and he started drinking. He said it was to help, but it didn’t. It took years until he hit rock bottom, for him to finally get help and quit.”

“You can’t get an overdose with weed. Or weed poisoning. There is no rock bottom.”

“I didn’t say he got alcohol poisoning. And rock bottom isn’t always physical. It all caught up to him. It's easy for that to happen when you aren’t really running. And I’m sorry man, this shit? Just tonight alone, the clock shit, that guy bleeding out on the floor? I’m trying not to lose it, but it’s really hard.”

“But can’t you see why I need it?’ he asked, almost pleaded.

“Dude, I’ve seen it on your face. No substance will free you from this. You’re haunted by it.”

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Mike Wheeler

The hospital didn’t release Steve until 7 o’clock the next morning.

His cuts hadn’t been too deep, thankfully, but he had needed about a million stitches to close everything up. Ms. Byers’ had been good enough to get to the hospital, but not enough for the long term. They also wanted to monitor him for a couple hours to make sure the bleeding had stopped completely.

Ms. Byers had managed to get the phone line up sometime over the last day, so his call had rung though the house, jarring Mike awake.

Nancy picked him off and dropped him off at the hospital and picked up Robin so the rest of them went off to do their rounds as pretend-hazmat people, making sure to clear out the next section in time.

He and Dustin were in charge of walking with Steve back to the Byers.

He wasn't sure if people who had just been flayed alive by interdimensional bats were supposed to walk miles, but they didn’t really have a car available. There was no one to drop off Steve's car, and if walking was iffy, Steve driving himself back as an absolute no.

“You should just ask Robin out,” Dustin insisted and Mike cringed a bit.

“Look man, I love you, but just stop.” Steve said, waving his juice box, trying to make the point he had been making for hours. “You’ve already tried to tell me to go out with Robin-”

“Which I still don’t understand why you won’t go with her. I mean, at first I thought she turned you down because she was too cool, but she’s just about as big a nerd as you are-”

“And don’t think I didn’t notice how you were trying to hint i should make a move on Nancy,” he accused.

Dustin rolled his eyes. “As if you we’re crying over the breakup-”

“That was almost two years ago! Also, Nancy is still very much with Jonathan, in case you forgot.”

Dustin winced at that and Mike shot him a dirty look. What the hell. 

“And look,” Steve continued, “I like both of them, love them both, even, but I don’t love them like that. I’m not going to force myself into some relationship box trying to make something work when I know that even I don’t feel like that. I need to stop doing that, because I’ve done that a lot and it never made me happy. Relationships are something you should have to force yourself into because you don’t want to be alone or like the only way to care about a girl is to date her.”

Mike stared at him, his words sinking in.

What he said made sense, but at the same time, it was hard to wrap his head around it. Relationships should be special, but real life wasn’t a story, but then again, maybe relationships weren't supposed to be so forced, shouldn’t only be because it was what they were supposed to do.

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jim Hopper

He knew what the call was about before Powell even began speaking.

As good as the kids had done at trying to section everyone off, there were still too many people in town, too many variables, so it was unsurprising to know there had been a sixth attack.

Nancy had been grim when he told her, but she didn’t seem all that surprised.

“He can get anyone,” she said. “All he has to do is come in at the right angle and he can exploit it. Everyone in the hell town has their demons.” And he agreed.

Sarah was always present in his mind, and now he had his lab torture-induced nightmares too, and he knew that all those things made him vulnerable. It was still a little early for Vecna to target him, if the guy kept with the three day turnaround, but they were assuming he would keep the same patterns. But they didn’t know this guy much, only that he was human, and humans were known to be fickle.

The only thing they knew for sure was the music thing, which he reiterated to Powell and Callahan. He would have hated to see what could have happened if they had shown up half an hour earlier and had ditched the Walkman.

“It’s fine,” Callahan said, with a laugh. “We’ll be fine.”

They had snuck him into the station- not that they had really needed to, what with most of the town evacuated. He meandered through the desks all of it so similar to how it was before he “died.”

“I’m not joking,” Hopper said.

“Really,” Callahan said with an easy smile. “I don’t have anything to worry about. I don’t think enough about the future to be worried about it and I don’t have anything in my past to regret. I missed a lot of trauma and all of that. I don’t need to walk around with a boombox on my shoulder.”

He tried again, but his words to Callahan fell on deaf ears. But his eyes caught on  Powell, the way the Chief's eyes strayed to the tape on his desk and Hopper knew he knew to proceed with caution.

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Mike had been on edge all morning. His mind was still trying to wrap itself around what Steve had said, what Dustin was saying about relationships, and he didn’t know what to think.

But maybe he had spent too much time trying to think about this on his own.

He drifted off to the room where El had set herself up and he was grateful that Hopper wasn’t there. Less grateful that the reason he wasn’t was because he was at the police station finding out more information on the sixth person who died, but beggars can't be choosers.

He tapped on the door and she looked up. “Can we talk?”

She nodded, scooting over to allow him space.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “For everything the other day. You were right. I’m not a good boyfriend and,” he closed his eyes, pressing them together tightly, “I’m not sure I want to be.”

“Well maybe I don’t want to be boyfriend-girlfriend Mike either,” El said and he could feel it this time. This wasn’t like the break-up last summer. This wasn’t impulsive. This was real. “We aren’t even friend-friends anymore,” El said and she sounded so sad, a sadness that echoed in his own soul.

“That’s not-” he said faintly but he knew any counterpoint he'd try to make wouldn't be true, not completely. Their current relationship was in a particularly shallow state, where they cared more about being in a relationship, than having a good one. It wasn’t about hanging out, it was all about being a couple, to the point that they forgot about what it had been like before.

“I want to be your friend,” he said, and he meant it so desperately.

He thought about it a lot, that night in the school with El in Nancy’s old pink dress. He didn’t know why he kissed her. He knew then that he loved her- the feeling had been so overwhelming that he thought that this must be that the movies were all about, this must be romance, and everyone else was telling him that was what it was- so he kissed her. And she looked just as shocked and overwhelmed as he felt, as confused as he felt.

He had felt a lot of things at the time, but he had cared for her. That had been undeniable. And then she was gone and he missed her. He didn’t know he could make friend that fast, but he supposed it had been the same with Dustin and Lucas and Will, all at the time. Now he wondered what would have happened if he had realized what it wasn’t back then, if he hadn’t tried to date her, hadn’t inadvertently forced them into this mess

Because real romance- it wasn’t what he and El had. Max had been right to have them break up. He always shot her down because there was all this pressure to feel something he didn’t want to acknowledge until this past week- wasn’t really there.

It was a complicated feeling, to love her but not like that. To love spending time with her but not love the relationship they got themselves stuck in before they really knew what dating was. He had had a crush on her, sure, she was super cool and could flip things with her mind and she was very quickly becoming a best friend, fitting in among Dustin, Lucas, and Will almost seamlessly.

It was a childhood crush, it wasn’t meant to withstand the pressures of an adult or even teenage relationship, not as fast as theirs had. There was that extra level of romanticism that came from their separation and the missing someone that made him radio her every night. The truth of the matter was that they didn’t know each other that well, and instead of doing that, they forced themselves into that boyfriend-girlfriend relationship without much to stand on.

“I think,” he confessed, “I wanted to date you because I cared about you and I thought that was how I was supposed to do it. But I have always wanted to be your friend. I’m sorry I spent so much time trying to be a boyfriend instead of actually trying to be one.”

“I think that is is easy to get in a trap of wanting to be normal,” El said. “Think I dated you for that same reason.”

“Forced conformity,” Mike breathed.

El blinked, then nodded.

“But what we are doing now is becoming friends. We should not be boyfriend/girlfriend.”

“Agreed,” he said offering her a small smile and then they both took a deep breath in and it was like this gigantic weight had been lifted off their shoulders.

Mike sat down on the carpet across from El. “I love you, El,” he said, the words finally easy to get out. “And I guess the reason I haven’t been able to say it is because I didn’t know how to say it when I don’t mean it like, as a couple.”

“Words are hard Mike,” she said softly.

He nodded, wiping the tears out of his eyes yeah. “I know.”

“You know,” she said after a moment, an almost fond smile at the edge of her lips, “when we first met- that night at the gate- you said we were friends. We would always be friends. And you told me the truth, friends don’t lie,” she said with a half-smile as she reached out and grabbed his hand.

“I’m not ready for a relationship like that, El,” he said quietly. “I thought I was, but we were kids, you know? I feel like we didn’t really know anything back then.”

She nodded.

“I knew I liked you a lot, so thought that dating was what came next. I still like you a lot. But just-”

“Not like-like,” she said and he nodded.

“No.” He closed his eyes and swallowed hard. “Not like that. I’m sorry. I wish I did. I tried, I promise.

“I love you, El,” he said sincerely. “I really mean that, I always have. But just not in a dating way. I’m sorry I stopped saying it. I was just scared because I didn’t want to lie to you because I knew if it said it would sound like a romantic way and I didn’t mean it like that. I didn’t want to lie to you, but in doing that I hurt you instead and I’m really sorry.”

“It’s okay Mike. I- I thought the same thing, about love. That it could only happen like that with a boy if they were dating. But I don’t want to date right now. I was happier when we were just friends. Except that we were fighting monsters.” She gave him a kiss on the cheek. “I love you too.  But as a friend.”

He laughed and he gave her a hug

“So, friends,” she said slowly, trying out the word, it was simultaneously old and new between them. “Okay. How do we just…”

“Will told me you like Star Trek?”

She nodded fervently. “I like Spock. He speaks very precisely.”

“We watched the trouble with tribbles when we were kids and we teased Dustin because we said if he found one he would keep it in his room,” Mike said as he watched Dustin and Lucas come in.

She laughed.

“Hey,” Dustin interjected, “that was unfounded and untrue.”

“Dart,” El countered and he harrumphed but it was lighthearted and he walked away. She made eye contact with Mike and they both busted up laughing

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan glanced around to make sure no one saw him. He immediately felt guilty because why was he sneaking around to see one of the few other people who knew about all this stuff, but he knew it was because he didn't want anyone else to hear what he had to say.

He knew Eddie, before. Well, not knew-knew, just knew of him. They were both outsiders, the only difference was that Eddie was a charismatic outcast so people actually saw him.

But he knew that Eddie was a dealer. Everyone in Hawkins knew and he was the main supplier unless they wanted to go down to the lake and hope maybe Reefer Rick was home, which he never was. Or at least that was what he heard. Never had any interest in asking before. Somehow getting high alone seemed  impossibly sadder than spending all day alone in the school dark room. Not to say it was bad, but it wasn't exactly a good look.

“Hey.”

Eddie looked up. “Hey. Jonathan, right?”

“Yeah.” He sat down next to him at the picnic table, facing out. He was on edge sitting at the very edge of the seat, leg jackhammering up and down.

“Can I help you with something, dude, or did you just want to sit?”

“Do you have anything? I'll pay,” he clarified.

“What? Weed?”

He swallowed, checking around him again, and nodded.

“Right now? In the middle of all this?” Eddie asked, incredulous.

And Jonathan didn't wince, but it was a near thing.

Eddie must have sensed it regardless. “Shit, sorry, I didn't mean it like that, it's just the last time I tried to deal to someone they ended getting snapped in half on my living room ceiling.”

Jonathan actually winced at that. Chrissy. “Fuck,” he said.

Eddie nodded, pale as a ghost, clutching onto the table top with white knuckles. “But I can go back-”

“What? No. I'm fine,” he lied through his teeth.

Eddie studied him, hard. “Are you okay? You seem like you're super strung up.”

Jonathan couldn’t help but give him a look and Eddie laughed, holding his arms up in surrender.

“Fair.”

“I just need to relax,” Jonathan said. “It’s… hard. Right now.”

And he knew it didn’t make sense. He knew they all needed to be vigilant right now, and Eddie knew that too, knew that none of them in their right mind should be touching any substance, not even a sip of alcohol, until the clock-scheme from hell was resolved.

“You seem like you're going through withdrawal. How much do you usually smoke?”

“Does it matter?”

“It's fine man, it's just some people get addicted to it and-”

Jonathan felt something drop to the pit of his stomach, images of his father flashing through his mind, the man sitting at the kitchen table drinking bottle after bottle of beer. 

Jonathan wasn't like that, he wasn't mean or hurtful. He was just having a good time. He was in control.

But he also couldn't stop.

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Mike Wheeler

Mike felt the words stuck in his throat. They always seemed to do that now, the only ones that seemed to be able to escape were the ones that were sharp enough to cut their way out past his tongue. He hadn’t expected it to be so hard to speak the older he got. On TV all the teenagers seemed so self-assured, like they could just say what they wanted but now everything was coming out wrong.

He was destroying his relationship with El, Will, he had gotten pretty damn close with Lucas, and it was only a matter of time before he would say something so utterly stupid and ridiculous that even Dustin would look at him with disdain.

And maybe it was better that way, to be alone. He never really got what Jonathan was going on about, but he thought he got it now.

He was drifting, aimless today. Everyone was coming and going, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to leave the Byers house.

Maybe it shouldn’t have been a surprise that he ended up in Jonathan’s room.

“How do you do it?”

Jonathan blinked, coming back to the present. He had come back from wherever a while ago and had been out of it since then.

“Do what?” he asked.

“Be you.”

Jonathan gave a humorless laugh. “You don’t want to be like me, Mike.”

“You always said it was good to a freak. Will told me you said that,” he accused.

“That part is true. But the whole-self-imposed loner thing, it really isn’t. I isolate myself in my room smoking weed all day so I don’t have to think. I don’t talk to your sister who is one the best things in my life because I didn’t want to talk about it. I’m lucky I got Argyle.”

“He’s chill.”

Jonathan chuckled. “He’s deceptively good at that. He doesn’t let you push him away, even though that is my first instinct. I don’t need anybody, I can handle myself. Maybe the drugs made it worse, I don’t know. I forgot about the people I cared about, and I don’t want to be a person who does that. I don’t think you do either,” Jonathan looked at him. “You would have died for your friends Mike, I don’t think that has changed.”

“But if I lose them,” his voice cracked, betrayed him. “If I try, they could be gone. We thought we got rid of the Upside Down in ‘83 then again in ‘84 and then it fucking came back and I feel like it’s not going to stop until it kills one of us.”

“This isn’t a story, Mike. Someone doesn’t have to,” he gestured vaguely at the air, “die at the end to meet some compulsatory requirement in order to defeat the bad guy.”

“No, this is real life and likely more than one of us are going to die,” he snapped.

He thought about it and he felt it in his core. If one of them had to die, it should be him. Lucas had promise and charisma. He had the foresight to try and get himself out of the hard times but he was also loyal to his friends. Dustin was a genius, and he could do anything. Everyone could move on except him.

It was the perfect end, wasn't it? He and Lucas, Dustin, and Will all reconciled yesterday, he was back on good terms with Max, and this morning he was moving forward with El. Wasn't that popular in stories, for a life to be snuffed right when they try to turn their life around?

If some had to die, it might as well be him

“Don’t say that.”

Mike’s head shot up and he stared at Jonathan, petrified. He didn’t know he had said that out loud.

“It feels like everything is over, but you can fix your relationships. They all love you.”

He nodded just so he could get out of the conversation, wandering out with his hands shoved in his pockets.

He was drifting again and fhe found himself in Will’s room now.

He settled on the makeshift bed while he watched Will organize all hus art supplies. They had been jumbled in the drive.

It was calming to be in here with Will, and he could feel his mind go to ease.

“We broke up,” he said, startling himself out of the quiet .

Will jolted in surprise. Mike watched as the seconds it took for Will to process what was said and the he looked almost… upset.

“Why? I thought you two were made to be. You two have basically been together since you were twelve.”

Mike shrugged. “We felt that we were dating because that was what other people told us we were supposed to be doing. But we- we were just kids, Will. We didn’t have to worry about all that stuff. Maybe we shouldn’t at all. I mean, we deal with the supernatural all the time, why should our lives fall into little boxes.”

Will stared at him. “They shouldn’t.”

“Fuck what other people say,” Mike said vehemently. “Eddie called it forced conformity. And I’m sick of it.” He looked at Will. “Have you ever felt like you haven’t done anything wrong, but you just don’t… fit. And you can’t put your finger on it because there’s nothing special about you- you know you’re not a superstar or something, but no matter how hard you try to fit in, something just feels… off and it gets worse as you get older.”

“All the time,” Will said quietly. “I never really felt that with the party or Jonathan, but when I would go to school, I just… I knew.”

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

The people in town were not happy to be locked up in their own homes. It was kind of good that they didn’t like it because it would be better if they left completely. Though there was always the risk that they would get fed up and then just sneak through town under their radar. 

They were only assuming how Venca chose his victims, and already he had led some across town so they could die in the correct section. But as the civilian population died down, the higher chance Vecna would turn his attention back to them.

It was terrifying that one of them could be next. They were sleeping in shifts, all of them together so someone could keep watch and make sure they didn’t wander away. They also had a team would be walking the perimeter of the section to make sure that no one wandered in.

But despite all the progress on that front, they were stagnating on everything else

“We need all the supernatural experts we can,” Lucas said. “If someone like that exists.”

“You know who we need?” Dustin asked, so excited he was nearly buzzing out of his skin.

Mike’s face went to one of disbelief. “No.”

Will shook his head. “He doesn’t need to be involved with all of this.”

“He kind of already has,” Lucas said sheepishly. “He told us the theory of the flea and the acrobat.”

“Who?” El asked

“Are you talking about Mr. Clarke? He didn’t even know what all this was about when we talked to him before. This was all just hypothetical.”

“Well maybe we need someone to look at this who thinks its all hypothetical, who’s not so entrenched in all this. We have myopic view of everything that’s going on we can’t even see outside of it,” Dustin said. “We need a captain on our curiosity voyage.”

“What does this- what does this mean?” Hopper called after them but they were hopping on their bikes and hightailing it to Mr. Clarke’s house.

“Hey,” Mr. Clarke said, a little confused. “Not that I’m not happy to see all of you, but what are you doing here?”

“We have a science question.”

He looked inscrutable for a moment but then he laughed. “Why am I not surprised.”

“Do you remember what you said about the flea and the acrobat?”

“Sure,” he said easily

“What if,” Dustin said, “the membrane between the worlds wasn’t simply matter. What if it was alive?”

Mr. Clark’s eyes flashed with interest.

“I’d say that if it did heal, hypothetically, then it would scar over. It would be thicker than ever harder to rip through.”

It had taken less effort than Will thought it would for them to convince Mr. Clarke to come to the base, not that they referred to it as such to him.

“Scott Clarke,” Mom said in confusion, staring at the science teacher who was standing on their front steps.

“I was told someone was on a curiosity voyage,” he said, holding his box of stuff.

“We need science help,” Dustin confirmed.

“Wow,” he said looking at Cerebro. “This is very impressive, Dustin, I have to say.”

“My girlfriend Suzie has a long-range radio too,” he said.

“Well, she seems like quite a catch. Joyce, Hopper,” he said giving them a nod. “Nice to see you’re not dead.”

“Likewise,” Hopper grit out

Mr. Clarke had been kind when Will came back. He didn’t push him or ask where he had been, not like all the other kids at school or like the other teachers tried to glean. He knew that Will was going through something but he was always there with science.

And Will- Will loved science. He was sure that that was one of the reasons that he and the rest of the party all had become friends on some level- they knew that they all had the same draw towards science. Lucas was more into physics, Dustin into engineering or whatever he could get his hands on. Mike was more about the logic and the processing and Will loved the experimenting. He was clever, as his mom said, he was able to pick up on things, subtleties, he had always been detail-oriented. That was how he stayed alive in the Upside Down, he had been playing with the dimension, he noticed things, he felt the Mind Flayer.

Mr. Clarke didn’t ask why the Byers were back in town or how they were back in their old house, taking it all in stride.

He walked in and he saw Jonathan crouched on the flor, looking at a map with Argyle and Eddie. “Hello boys. Jonathan , it's good to see you. I thought you were in California.”

“We’re back,” he stuttered out.

He looked a bit confused but he nodded. “Edward,” he said as he caught Eddie. Last I heard you were captaining the ol’ DnD ship at the high school.”

“Probably for the last year. If I can pass my last class and you know,” he waved vaguely outside.

“Yes,” and he turned frowning a bit in confusion. “Elanor?”

“That’s uh, that’s actually the thing. She’s not my cousin.”

Will shot Mike and the others a look but Lucas jus rolled his eyes and sent one back that said he'd explain later.

“That makes sense, I suppose. It had been a bit perplexed by how blond her hair was at her age, considering you hair is so dark, save Holly’s but I just chalked it up to the wonders of genetics.”

“And her name is not Elanor either. I mean, we call her El-”

“Like French?”

“Short for eleven,” she corrected. And at that the confusion gave way to concern.

“The number?”

“I also go by Jane,” El offered.

“See, we have to tell you something. Something odd,” Dustin said. “You may want to sit down for this.”

“Alright,” he said even though he could argue they had already told him a lot of very odd somethings and he pulled out one of the kitchen chairs and set his box on the table.

They tried to keep it short, but it was all still a lot. It helped that there were times when they were able to connect it back to the help they had asked for previously, which seemed to click for him. He was contemplative throughout the whole thing.

“You’re taking this very well,” Mom said, hanging onto Hopper’s arm, concerned.

“I suppose this sheds light on quite a few things,” he said. “Magnets,” he said nodding to Mom. “And the flea and the- oh boy. Okay this is a lot of information. First of all, Will, I’m glad you’re okay. And El you’re very remarkable young woman and very brave. I don’t know that I would have been able to do the same in your shoes.” His brow pinched. “While I appreciate the information, I am wondering what you need from me. I’m happy to help, but all of this goes beyond the scope of my knowledge, I’m afraid.”

“We have all this information,” they dumped it on the table and Mr. Clarke stared at it all with widening eyes, “but we can’t make heads or tails of it all. It was all statistics and lab notes. You know how to read this stuff.”

“Yeah, I do,” he nodded, more sure of himself. “I like to keep up with the journals.”

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

El Hopper

El was wary to be around Mr. Clarke. He seemed nice, but she had a distrust towards scientists.

“I do not like science,” she told him simply

“That’s unfortunate,” Mr. Clarke said. “Though I can understand  why. I fear those men were not very good scientists.”

“They were very smart.”

“El, science is made to understand the world around us, all the remarkable things around us. How plants grow,how babies develop-”

“Babies come from sex,” she said, confused. Scientists were not needed to discover that.

“Well, yes, they do come from that, but how they grow, it’s an amazing thing. Learning to walk, talk, move things with their mind,” he said, a nod in her direction, and she couldn't stop the short laugh. “Even how pinecones release their seeds when activated by fire because they know they need to regrow. The ocean, the Mariana Trench. Don’t even get me started on the Bermuda triangle or outer space,” he said smiling and she couldn’t help but smile with him at his enthusiasm. “There are a million things out there, just waiting to be discovered. Because science isn’t for the smart, it is for the curious. But understanding all that means nothing if we don’t understand how to treat one another, right? And the way they treated you was not okay.”

“They said they needed to study me because there weren’t any like me, I needed to save the world.”

“Well, are any of them expected to save the world all on their own?”

She shifted uncomfortably. “But they do not have superpowers.”

“And because you do you have to do all of this on your own?” he asked. “Will’s good a drawing, right?”

“Yes.”

“But does that mean he has to make all the art in the world?”

“No, that is impossible.”

“So why should all of this be on your shoulders? I’m not saying you should do nothing, but they shouldn’t put all this pressure on you. It sounds like a very heavy burden to bear.”

“I was the only one who could close the gate.”

“That may be so but they shouldn’t have treated you like that.”

“It was not too bad, most of the time. I was able to use my powers quite well before we met. Now I am.. relearning.”

“It wasn’t a strain? I am asking because I do not know.”

She shrugged. “Some days it was hard, especially after a long day doing experiments, but the worst was only a bloody nose, and that was not so bad.”

Mr. Clarke furrowed his brows. “You bleed from the nose?”

“Yes. They said that was normal.”

“Where was the blood coming from?”

“I- we don’t know.”

“So every time you used your powers, you start bleeding from some unknown source and the scientists who were watching you for years didn’t look into it either? How much blood have you lost?”

“It was fine. I could still do it,” El insisted.

“I’m not saying you can’t, but you could be hurting yourself and what about in the long-run?”

“That’s what I said last summer,” Mike protested. “All of you wouldn’t listen to me. I told you she’s not a machine to just do things for us as we need.”

“You said that?” she asked eyes wide.

He turned to her “I- yeah. I know it was overstepping, but I was upset.”

“Why?”

“Because you’re not a machine El? I mean, you have superpowers and that’s awesome but you’re a fucking person.”

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Murray Bauman 

Murray came back to the Byers after a long and much-needed rest and recuperation at his own house. A part of him had been tempted to stay there and not come back, but he had ultimately decided against it. As much as he was usually unaffected by most things, the impending apocalypse was getting to him enough that he was willing to go back to the Byers’ cramped house and work with some random teacher guy they thought might help. What help a man drenched in normalcy and convention could offer, he didn’t know, but he wouldn’t mind with the help and sorting through the data.

He made it back to the Byers’ and walked in, straight past the gaggle of people, back to where the kitchen was.

Another table had been set up in there with more folding chairs, and on the table were stacks and stacks of research. And at the table sat another man, one he had not seen before

Murray looked at him skeptically. “You’re the science teacher around here?”

“Yes. Scott Clarke.”

“Murray,” he said, as that was as much as he was willing to offer.

Scott took it easily enough. “I heard you can handle a fair bit of code. I’ve been looking to try my hand at that.”

“They say computers are the future,” Murray offered.

“You ever interested in AV?”

“Well, of course. Morse code and all of that.”

“How’d you get roped into all of this?” Scott asked, eyes flicking over the pages in front of him.

“I was on the conspiracy board about Barbara Holland’s disappearance.”

“Tragedy about her. I remember her in my class, though I guess it wasn’t a chemical spill now.”

“No,” he said simply. He paused before his mind compelled him to keep talking. “And then last year I got pulled into the mess with Joyce and Hop and this Russian scientist.”

“Russian? How did you two communicate?”

“I speak Russian, know your enemy and all that.”

“Sure,” Scott nodded easily.

“I mean, the guy, he wasn’t all that bad though. And Alexi he- he was funny and he loved science but he was still just a  kid at heart. And I-” he shook, his head shutting down. “He died, shot. Shouldn’t have expected more.”

“Maybe,” Scott said. “But I've found it's easier to be hard on ourselves for caring when faced with death.”

“It's foolish to get involved when the world is on brink of collapse.”

“But it's so miserable not to. And I think part of you agrees, or you wouldn't have kept coming back to help.” He righted his stack of paper and moved onto the next. “Tell me about him.”

He told him about Alexi, the bickering, the fights, the fair they were at before he got shot.

“He sounds like a nice man.”

“It’s stupid,” he argued. “We didn’t even know each other long and he was Russian and our prisoner.”

“Well, it sounds like you loved him.”

He scoffed. “Love. I’m not some child.”

“You think love is only for children?”

“I don’t think anyone can be in love when you get to our age.”

“Why? Because no one who has seen the world as bad as it is can see love? Because I’ll tell you something. I’ve read the papers on brain chemicals and cognitive pathways about love. Hormones and all that jazz. But despite all that, how hard we try to categorize it, there is still something just undefinable about love. It’s not made to fall into these tight little boxes. Love lives outside of all of that. Love lives beyond us,” he gave Murray a pointed look that  felt like it went right through him. “So to say it’s only for children is a bit reductive, no? Feelings don’t really like to follow shoulds and shouldn’ts. You can be afraid of things you know are not scary, and angry about things that are not a big deal. Why wouldn't love be the same?”

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

They were working over the membrane thing, and other signs of life related to the Upside Down. They knew that the gates were almost alive, what with all the vines and viscera, but they needed to know more about it. And Will was trying to remember, but it was hard.

Will wasn’t- Will wasn’t a coward. When he thought about what he did he couldn’t believe it, couldn’t really wrap his head around it. He saw something in the woods, ran, closed the door, looked for help and when he couldn’t find it, he called for it. When the monster stated using telekinesis, Will ran to the back shed, loaded a gun, ready to shoot. And when he was taken, he hid, but he also made several attempts to reach them.

“If you stayed in Castle Byers how did you know that there were Christmas lights or the paint on the walls. How could you use the lights without being directly above or below?” Lucas asked.

“I don’t know,” he said, frowning. Everything that happened during that week was hard to remember and even harder to make sense of. The only true thing that stuck was the intense fear he had the whole time.

“True sight,” Dustin said. “Seeing between worlds.”

Snatches of memories came back. The world, paper-thin for him. How he could call, coukd be like a poltergeist, setting things off on earth. He felt they were true memories from his vague recall.

He just couldn’t remember much from then.

“I can kind of see now, sometimes,” he said. “Not as much as when I was possessed, though,” he sifted through some of  the papers they found in the box where his mom had put all the “Upside Down Stuff” until he came to the old tape his mom had found, with the image he had seen echoing in his eyelids Halloween two years ago. He pulled out a tape from the borrowed vcr and set it to play

“The Mind Flayer, here,” he pointed at the image, a blurry but Will could still make it out well enough to sketch it, “he was pinned up like a spider.”

“That was how Vecna was,” Max said, “in my visions of him. Like he was charging or something.”

“Wow, he’s really going hard on/leaning into the spider motif,” Mike said, dry and biting, bitchy as ever. “How original.”

“Road trip,” Steve announced and they all startled. “Come on,” he said.

“Where are we going,” Will asked, turning off the tv and following after him.p, grabbing his shoes.

“Can you drive too, Byers?”

“Sure,” Jonathan said.

“Awesome,” Steve looked at them both. “We’re going to the music store. We’re making sure everyone has backups. No one is dying because the ribbon got shredded on their tape, yeah.?”

Jonathan nodded.

They all piled into the two cars as soon as Steve and Jonathan got the names of the songs the adults they were leaving behind needed.

They walked through the aisles, picking through the music. Dustin was keeping it lighthearted with Lucas a row away, while Lucas picked a copy from the dwindling Kate Bush selection.

Will thought his was a pretty easy choice. Should I Stay or Should I Go had become a sort of anthem on trying to escape the Upside Down, so if there was anything he could hear that would remind him to leave, it would be that.

Mike had gone through the front and slipped through the checkout without much hesitation.

He must already know what he wants, Will thought to himself, and he was almost envious that the choice was so easy for him. Even Will who had been dabbling with the Upside Down and its fuckery for years had hesitated. Max was the only one ahead of him, but that was because she was currently listening to the song she needed.

Eddie, from what Will had gathered from talking with Dustin and Lucas the past year, was really into heavy metal, another strong musical opinion, a tied with Robin, Eddie, and now that Jonathan was added into the mix. Those three were flitting across the store in a big internal debate.

El was picking though the music thoughtfully, listening to the samples and talking with Max about songs that she might know. She liked the music Jonathan played well enough, but she liked that Mall music more, that pop-y lighthearted stuff.

Will knew that Mike really looked up to Eddie and he wondered if he liked music like that now. Mike held his music to the side, in his bag, almost like he was ashamed of it. They stood by the door as they waited for everyone to finish up. Mike stepped back until his back was against the wall and he lowered himself down.

Dustin was the first to join them.

“What did you get Dustin?” Will asked.

“Bowie,” he said. “He’s awesome.”

Will nodded. He had heard some of his music.

“Oh shit,” Dustin muttered. “I think Robin and Eddie are going to start fighting again,” and then he was back off across the store where it looked like Eddie and Robin were getting into a very heated… discussion.

He smirked and turned to see a similar look on Mike’s face. His eyes strayed back down towards the bag, to the cassette player on Mike’s hip.

“Can I see,” he asked, looking at Mike’s bag, hands already drifting towards it to take it if Mike offered. Mike was hesitant, before he quickly flashed the cover at him.

Will recognized the art. It was on one his mom’s albums.

“Fleetwood Mac?”

“Oh. You know who they are?”

“Yeah,” he said, a bit quizzically. It wasn’t the music he usually listened to but, his mom listened to it. She listened to “The Chain” endlessly when his and Jonathan’s dad had left, so much so that he wouldn't have been surprised if there was a permanent groove in the vinyl. But it was more odd that Mike wanted to listen to it. It was old music.

“‘The Chain?’” he asked.

“No. ‘Landslide.’”

He had heard that one as well. He held out his hand and Mike took off his headphones and handed them over.

The music played over the tape

Well I’ve been afraid of changing

‘Cause I build around you.

He knew this song

“But time makes you bolder,

even children get older

And I’m getting older too” he spoke along with it and Mike had this watery look in his eyes.

“It’s stupid-”

“It’s not stupid,” Will said, and maybe it was the music or maybe it was everything that was happening right now or maybe it was Mike being so self-deprecating, but something in his eyes burned. “It’s not stupid if it means something to you.”

There was something sad about the song, a yearning to it and he didn’t know why this was Mike's favorite song, or at least the one that pieced through t his heart the best. He had friends, not a girlfriend, but an amicable ex, and Will thought he was doing okay. He watched as Mike clicked play and his head back against the wall, eyes closed, knees drawn up to his chest, arms draped across the top.

In the ten years they had known each other, Will had become an expert in what Mike looked like, his micro expressions, on every little thing about him, a consequence of being so desperately head-over-heels in love with him. He had spent countless hours thinking about the tilt of his nose, the angles of his jaw, the twists and curves or his hair. Almost religiously. Even the almost eight months they had been apart, he still caught it all.

But this, hidden away behind something so old and worn, but stubbornly there, he saw a sort of grief, an unspeakable sadness. The kind that Will felt sometimes where he felt a weight in his chest and a heartbreak that made him feel like he would never be happy again.

So in a move that was maybe stupid or self-sabotaging but he couldn’t bear to sit there with that kind of pain on someone he loved- he sat closer to him, until their sides touched. It wasn’t much but it was a bit of warmth in the ever-cooling Hawkins spiring. Mike opened his eyes and they were soft- tired and he looked confused- and Will gave in completely and touched his hand, his pinky and Mike simply looked at him before he took it, dropping their clasped hands between them. He turned his music down to listen to Mike’s.

“Will,” he looked worried.

“I’m okay,” he promised. Because he knew that despite Mike’s own sadness he would still worry about Will. “I haven’t heard him this time.”

Mike hesitated. “Okay,” he said, voice just above a whisper.”

And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills,

Where a landslide brought me down.

Mirror in the sky, what is love?

🕖

The Wheelers and the Sinclairs had moved back to their homes after they had been “cleared” from the gas leak.

There was only so much avoiding they could do.

So they had all shown up, and while Mrs. Wheeler was probably surprised, she let them all in easily

They didn’t have much, but the clothes they brought from Lenora were all stuffed in the boxes at the back of the U-Haul, which had been abandoned in the driveway since the advent of the apocalypse, but Mike has been going through a growth spurt for years and he’d never been one to clean out his stuff, so there’s something there, crammed in the back of his closest.

Will was used to hand-me-down so this isn’t all that different, except for maybe the style. He’s not sure he would consider his style whatever Karen Wheeler buys, but beggars couldn’t be choosers. He noticed from some of the clothes on the floor- the clothes Mike probably actually wears- not all of them are like that anymore either.

“That’s different,” he said, toeing at the baseball tee with Hellfire on it- black and white. Mike’s mom always had him in some sort of color, perfect schoolboy Macy’s catalogue poster boy.

“Eddie said I dressed too much like my mom bought my clothes at the GAP.”

“Your mom does buy your clothes from the GAP.”

He shrugged. “That’s the DnD shirt. We can probably get you one, you know, if we stop the world from ending.”

“Really?”

“Sure. They’re print to order.” He scrunched his brows. “We might have to go to Indianapolis though.”

“What’s another road trip,” he said easily and Mike smiled at that. Will felt his stomach twist happily so he forced himself to look away.

He picked though the clothes, brushing past things that were too small.

“Seriously when was the last time you went through your stuff?”

“Shut up,” Mike said, but there wasn’t any heat.

Will shrugged, a peace offering. “To be fair, I don’t think I would have went through my stuff if we weren’t moving.

“We didn’t donate your DnD stuff,” Mike said abruptly. “Well, we did, but not at the thrift shop. Lucas and Dustin gave it to Erica.”

Will eyebrow shot up to his forehead. “Really?”

“Yeah, she’s like level 12 now or something. She rolled a Nat 20 in our last campaign, saved the whole party.”

“Sounds badass.”

“It was. It was, like, insane.”

Will turned his attention back to the clothes. He picked out t-shirts and flannels- versatile, easy to layer. With the Upside Down starting to leak through, it was making things colder. He grabbed some jeans too.

“Here, let me wash some of my stuff with yours,” Mike said easily and Will nodded.

The went down to the basement and loaded the washer.

“I, uh…” Mike stared at it. Will chuckled, shaking his head.

“You take the detergent,” he said scooping it out of the box, “up to here. That’s for one load, you dump it in.” He showed him the buttons. They were different than the ones on the washer that came in their house in Lenora, but all machines were close enough anyway.

“Will, Mike, I thought I heard-” Mrs. Wheeler stopped halfway down the stairs, eyes locked on them. She looked stunned. “What are you-?”

“Will and I are washing some clothes.”

“Okay,” she said weakly. “Will’s clothes?”

“And mine. You know, from the floor,” he mumbled and Mrs. Wheeler looked like she was just about to pass out.

“Okay, well, I’ll leave you to it.” And she walked back up the stairs.

Will wacked him on the arm. “Dude.”

“What?” Mike protested.

“You don’t do chores?”

“I do some stuff. I shovel the driveway when it snows.”

“She’s busy all day. I don’t know how-”

“I’ll try harder,” Mike blurted out.

“Mike-”

“No, you’re right. I shouldn’t just take her for granted. I think it’s easy to forget how easy it is to do that.”

Will hummed. “We don’t- you know have to stay by the washer the whole time. We can leave.”

Mike nodded and they went back up the stairs. He didn’t really want to join in talking about this Vecna stuff and the imminent, pressing danger, but he couldn’t stay down there in the basement because he knew if he did they may start talking and he might accidentally spill more messy feelings and he couldn’t do that right now, because he might not be able to cover them up again

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

El Hopper

Nancy had an eclectic collection of clothing for El to choose from and Max brought over her own stuff. El had been wearing a lot of those plaid shirts that she got from Jonathan and Will which were nice and warm and “functional” like Joyce would like to say but she missed pretty clothes. And Nancy had a lot of pretty clothes.

She had sweaters with stripes and patterns and skirts and dresses. “You can pick what you want,” Nancy said. “I haven’t been able to fit in those forever.”

“Then why did you still have them?”

“Because I’m as bad as Mike and don’t go through my stuff.”

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers 

Being at the Wheelers was overwhelming.

The house itself was fine- Mrs. Wheeler always kept it exceptional neat and tidy, but it was the memories that got to him.

He hoped they had good memories of him. They had those, especially when they were kids. He knew that, but it still felt like too much. And wanting them to remember him at all, let alone the good times felt like too much to ask. Too selfish to want to be remembered. To want not to be forgotten and then, all the more unforgivable, for them to think kindly of him when he was gone.

He was feeling restless. They were camping out at his old house at night, but they didn’t have any running water or heat or literally anything that made it more than four walls, a roof, and the ever-present air of trauma that touched the ceiling.

So then they had been at the Wheelers for dinner. Mrs. Wheeler had been overwhelmed when she saw all the people at her door, but she took it easily as she always did, smoothed down her skirt and her hair and then she went to the kitchen and added more plates.

Will didn’t know what to do with himself. They were talking about Vecna and their possible plans but they were arguing right now and he didn’t want to be there, sitting there, zoning out, trying not to think of the possession and whatever new flavor of possession was going on right now.

It was like he was highjacking people now. It wasn’t slow, methodical like it had been for Will and for Billy, like a lobster being boiled alive. These possessions were an aggressive and violent takeover. Vecna only needed their brains for a couple of minutes, he needed them distracted before he ran them into the metaphorical wall before they knew that was happening. He was going too far with this car metaphor and it wasn’t making sense anymore.

Mrs. Wheeler was always so nice to them he felt like he needed to do something as a thank you. So, he looked through the cabinets, until he found the floor cleaner and a mop and then he worked on wiping up the floor that was now covered with light dirt scuffs and sand from the days they had spent in the desert and had accidentally tracked in with their shoes. He worked slowly and carefully, making sure it was all uniform, so there wouldn’t be any ugly streaks when all of this dried.

“Will?”

He turned like a child caught red-handed with his hands in the cookie jar and, fuck how stupid was he?  Mrs. Wheeler was staring at him with this sort of alarmed shock look on her face and he should have known better than to do this. She probably had a system she used, to get everything just-so. She had always been one to have things just-so.

“Sorry,” he blurted out. “I just- We made the floor all dirty and you were so nice and made us dinner I thought I could- sorry.”

And then to his horror she burst out crying

He just stared at her and he was glad he was done with this floor because he felt like now would be a good time to leave.

She came up and gave him a hug. “Thank you. No one has offered to do more than help clear the table since- since I lived with my mom. It’s just nice,” she said wiping her eyes. “Its nice to have some help sometimes.”

“Oh, okay. I’m sorry no-one-”

“It’s okay, it’s not like I ever ask for help,” she said with a self-deprecating laugh, wiping away the last of her tears. “When you’re a mom you have to do what you have to do. Joyce raised you boys right.”

“Thank you.”

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Karen Wheeler

She insisted they stay after dinner. Their kids- even Erica -were off who-knows-where and there was a maybe-murderer on the loose.

She had tried to get them to stay, but they had insisted on going back to the Byers to help them set everything up and she couldn’t find a good enough excuse to tell them not to.

But the Sinclairs had stayed, same with Claudia. Ted was off who knew where readings while the rest of them talked about what was going on and how suspicion everything felt.

And then all hell broke loose.

The back door slammed open and Mike was there with Joyce and Will and El and two strange men and Jonathan running into the house like their lives depended on it, shut the door. The man with longer hair and glasses was screaming.

Ted frowned that tiny frown of his and dropped his napkin on the table. “What the hell is going on,” he demanded and then the other door was opening, and more people were flooding into their house.

She could tell Claudia wanted to say something about the unhinged way Dustin was behaving but Lucas and Max, who were quite well-behaved for the most part were there too.

“Did you see that?” Dustin was screaming. “It was the Demogorgon, I swear to-”

“We left everything in the car,” the long-haired man- Argyle- swore. “We’re up a creek and we set the paddles on fire.”

“Where is it?” Nancy asked calmly

“Left on elm,” Max said, and Nancy nodded and disappeared out of sight.

“What is going on?” Karen asked, because there had to be some reasonable explanation to this, there had to be some sort to reasoning behind this- everything.

And then Nancy was back, and she had a shot gun in her hands a revolver strapped to her side. She stopped at the kitchen table with a  box of ammunition and began loading it like she had done this a hundred times before.’

“Where did you get that, young lady?” Ted demanded but she breezed past him.

“Is Eddie hidden?” she asked.

“Yeah, Robin’s with him.”

She nodded. She made eye contact with Jonathan for a long minute. And then he nodded, almost imperceptible. “Jonathan, Steve, and I are going to see if we can find that thing, take it down. Jon, grab my hairspray from the bathroom. We’ll drop Argyle off at Steve’s.”

“Gracias,” Argyle said.

Nancy nodded absently. “You got a lighter?”

He dug through his pants and tossed her one.

“Steve’s got tons of cans of his Fara Fawcett spray,” Dustin said. “You can probably pick some up with him,”

Nancy nodded, slinging her gun over her shoulder and then reaching for the walkie she must have brought with her.  “Still on station 3?”

Dustin nodded.

“What the hell is going on,” Karen asked again, more upset. She had invited over the Sinclairs and Claudia to talk about what was going on and now the issue had barged right into her kitchen.

“Karen, I know this seems like a lot.”

“Holy shit. Chief Hopper?” She stood there stunned. He hardly looked the same. He looked malnourished, skin sallow like he hadn’t seen the sun.

Ted straightened his glasses.

“Someone needs to tell us what’s going on right now,” Karen demanded, her tone allowing for no pushback.

They all looked uncomfortable but then they started to talk.

About monsters and superpowers and how they had kept that little girl locked up for years, Mike hiding her in the basement, what really happened to Will, the funnel, and Bob’s death. Nancy and Jonathan calmly talked about turning the Byers house into a  booby trap, about the monster they tried to kill, how it killed Barb, how Steve was there too. They talked about Mews and Dart and Claudia looked so betrayed even Dustin looked ashamed. How Nancy and Jonathan had gone to Illinois to find the conspiracy theorist Murray- who she recognized now as the guy with the glasses. How they published that story. Will’s possession, Steves gig as a babysitter, Max driving a car and Billy trying to kill her and Lucas. And then they told about the mall and El losing her powers and all the people turning to sludge and how that had impaled Billy and a gate of all things.

“And now there’s Vecna,” Dustin said, “trying to kill us now.”

“Erica you went climbing around airducts in the shopping mall for ice cream?” Sue demanded.

“In my defense,” she said, “it seemed like a good trade at the time.”

And Karen- Karen just couldn’t process all of this. How her kids had been involved in all of this. She wanted to scream at Joyce for not telling her, any of them, but how was she supposed to do that? Just casually say, “Hey, my son was kidnapped and possessed by an interdimensional demon and I can only communicate with him through Christmas lights and zapping phones?” They wouldn’t even believe her when she said she thought he was alive.

She looked at Will and he was just standing their quietly, carefully blank, and she thought of the horrors that had ripped through his body, such a small thing. El too.

She wished they had trusted her but the wiser part of her understood it wasn’t about her, but she wished she could have treated El right, gave her clean clothes and real food, not just what Mike smuggled her.

“We have to go,” Nancy said.

And then the older teens were gone.

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan didn't know how he found it first, but he was feeling the repercussions.

The Demogorgon was towering over him, crowding him back. He felt like he was in a haze, the terror and fear were at a distance, but it was fighting, pounding down that door he had been building for the past year. A part of him wanted to lay back and accept his fate, but a stronger part of him roared in the back of his mind, fighting to break through all of this delirium, all this resignation, and the door wasn’t broken from outside like it always was, it came from inside.

The part of him that told himself he would be fine even if he was a freak, the part that loved Will and his Mom and Nancy fiercely and he didn’t want to die, he never had, but he had beaten himself down until he felt like there would be no difference.

The Demogorgon had come thought the portal so quickly they had barely had a glimpse of it before it started attacking. He knew he would have back-up, the question was whether it would be in time.

But if they didn’t, and this killed him, it would escape, and he could see the rampage in his mind’s eye, the way it would tear families apart, leaving bodies in its wake, Vecna’s countdown be-damned.

He reared his arm back and he pushed it forward with a surge, plunging the dagger from his hip into the Demogorgon.

It roared that hideous, clicking scream and he tore the blade upwards, cutting through all its core, leaving its organs slipping and slopping out onto the ground.

The Demogorgon slumped onto him, but made no move to attack. It was wounded and he shoved it off of him.

Steve was there in a moment, dousing it with gasoline and then Jonathan flicked his lighter and tossed it into the mess of guts, watched as the monster that had ruined his life burned. He knew it wasn’t the same but he saw it and he couldn’t stop himself from remembering that November, how he had been filled with such grief and anger, unrivaled by anything else.

Jonathan watched as the body ignited, unable to move from where he stood on the ground, aside from the slunch forward as he braced his hands to his knees  to keep upright, and the slow, but steady tremor that was starting to overtake his body.

“You okay, man?” Steve asked, hand on the small of his back and Jonathan lurched forward, throwing up all over the ground. His stomach was quivering and he sank back because he wasn’t sure if his legs would carry him much longer.

He backed into a solid surface and he felt Steve’s arms brace him to keep him from falling, carefully lowering him to the ground.

He felt Steve’s finger scrape his hair out of the way and he shuttered, dropping his head to his drawn-up knees

Steve didn’t ask if he was okay, instead looking back and forth about around them making sure that nothing was coming.

🕖

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jim Hopper

Vecna was getting smarter, or else he had the best luck.

Hoppers was like was going off with update after update on the Demogorgon, but he was hardly paying attention to it, where he stood side-by-side Chief Powell in section seven, looking down at the sidewalk.

Callahan was on the ground, his ever-present smile gone, his face gaping in horror.

“I thought he was serious,” Powell said. “He wouldn’t have lied.”

Hopper just stood across from the scene where Callahan’s body laid and the coroner finished noting the scene and zipped him up in the black plastic bag. 

“He might not have been, but Vecna  knows what he’s doing, he knows where to hit.”

“And he didn’t have his guard up so it took him by surprise.” He shook his head. “A fucking idiot,” he said, but there was no barb to his words. It would have been teasing, if Callahan was still here.

Chapter Text

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

El Hopper

Eddie had given the rest of them a ride after Steve and Jonathan had sped back to Byers’ house.

Mike felt in step easily beside her, and she felt relief to know he was there, along with the rest of their friends

El didn’t know how to put it into words, what had changed between her and Mike, not really. Papa- Brenner, she mentally corrected- had always placed so much emphasis on words. Everything was always so clinical, sterile.  Even before Henry, he was like that. El remembered that even more clearly now.

She would see the others every day, but there was always this distance between them- not due to any particular feelings between them or even their powers, but because something else had put it there. Now she knew it was Brenner, the distance was because they weren’t supposed to be anything more than lab rats.

She had thought that was the way things were always supposed to be, before she found Mike, Lucas, and Dustin, and friendship came easier to her than her powers ever had.

She had grown used to the distance between her and Mike, because distance was her default, but now it almost felt as though the chasm between them had disappeared completely.

A break-up was a significant change, so it should have felt different, should have been as tumultuous as last summer had been, but this was calmer and it felt more like… relief. Her feelings towards Mike hadn’t changed, and she had a feeling his towards her hadn’t either, but there wasn’t that invisible thing between them anymore.

She was closer to him, so the feelings were stronger, but they weren’t all that different from what she felt for Max and Lucas and Dustin. She didn’t feel the butterflies like the girls in the movies did. And she wondered if they had just been trying to force their relationship to fit in this tiny little box and it had been hurting them, trying to make it work when it wasn’t.

It was like she didn’t feel that heaviness anymore. It was like last summer when she and Max decided to break up with their boyfriends and spent weeks just going to the mall and getting ice cream. This was like that, only without the constant, stupid fights, and the fact that she and Mike and her were talking.

The car came to a stop and Mike was out quickly.

There was a Demogorgon on the ground, dead by the looks of it. The body was being eaten by flames and she saw an red canister next to it, so she assumed Steve had gotten the chance to douse it.  There was a mess of guts on the ground and she could smell vomit.

Will had disappeared to find his brother, and now she could see him leading Jonathan out. He looked pale, but okay.

Will broke off and came over to her.

She nodded in Jonathan’s direction. “Is Jonathan okay?”

He nodded. “He’s shaken up, but he’s calming down now. He’s probably going to sleep for hours now.:

He nudged her. “How about you and Mike? You two seem to be doing well,” Will said beside her with half a smile. “You two have always been perfect together.

“Mike and I broke up,” she said, confused. “Didn’t Mike tell you?”

“Yes, but I don’t get it. Are you okay?”

“It is okay, Will,” she said, and she put her hand on his. “We made the decision together. We want to be friends instead.”

He nodded stiffly.

“I just know how happy you two have been together.”

“I think,” she said, thinking over her words, “that we are happier now. Except for Vecna.”

He snorted wetly. “Yeah, except for Vecna.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan watched as the Demogorgon remains were dragged away, away from where anyone passing by could see it. It was early still, probably around 4, so everyone else in town was likely still asleep, but they couldn’t guarantee for how much longer.

Jonathan wanted to sleep desperately.

Everyone had gone inside to sleep or over to the Wheelers and Sinclairs to help them move, but he was here, trying to figure out what to do, to get rid of the restlessness in his mind.

His body was aching over his flagging adrenaline and he wished he had gone to the Wheelers with Nancy, but they still weren’t really talking.

He staggered to his feet, exhaustion making him feel almost drunk.

Jonathan appeared at Steve's side, who had decided to check his car while Jonathan had taken a breather on the ground. “Has Nancy talked to you. About… us.”

Steve jolted in surprise, banging his head against the raised hood of his car.

“For fuck’s sake!” He said, rubbing his head, and Jonathan felt a bit bad. You know, I thought the purpose of the whole Nancy dumping me and getting together with you was to keep me out of your relationship.”

Jonathan stiffened and winced. “Sorry, you’re right.”

Steve sighed and pulled his head up out of the hood of the car. “Look man, just talk to her. Both of you know something’s up and you both keep dancing around it like little ballerinas or something. Approach it head on.”

“But maybe it’s better this way, if we part.”

“No, no, no, fuck that Byers. You’re not doing that self-pitying bullshit. You’re not saying who Nancy should be with.”

“Of course not,” he said, words a little slurred. “Nancy can be with whoever she wants, I’m just saying it would be better if it was you.”

Steve shook his head, and Jonathan thought he caught an eyeroll. “I’m going to tell you something Byers and I’m going to need you to remember this- you and Nancy, you two are some sort of soulmate shit. She gets her hare-brained schemes and you go along with her.”

“You do too.”

“I take more coercion,” he said but Jonathan could get it, it wasn’t quite the same. Steve had a sense of responsibility to doing what was supposed to be done, but he had to be goaded into it. He had been popular, leading people through that hierarchy, he had been the babysitter to the kids. He was meant to be a support system, not out of necessity but because that was how he was wired. Jonathan took care of his mom and brother because that was how he grew up and he matured but he didn’t go out of his way to do that. He had never been particularly good with people. Nancy was some sort of halfway between him and Steve. She kept to herself most of the time, but she could easily blend if she needed to. Perfect for a journalist. Perfect to get Jonathan out of his shell. 

“You two always made sense,” Steve continued.

“We did?”

“Yeah, man. Why do you think I was so pissed when I thought you two were sleeping together?”

“Because you thought she was cheating?”

“Well, yeah, that. But also, because I knew if it was true I would have no chance. I’m honestly surprised she didn’t break up with me sooner.” Steve took another look at him and sighed, shaking his head. “Let’s get you back home, Byers. You need to sleep.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

Will hadn’t been able to sleep.

It was unsurprising, considering everything, but it was unwelcome all the same.

He was in his room, Dustin, Lucas, and Mike all crammed in there. If this had been three years ago, it would have been like a sleepover. But now instead of talking about stupid stuff, they were up late talking about the imminent destruction of the world.

El and Max had snuck in an hour or so ago, combing though the things Max had seen, looking for clues, all of them triggering  flashes of images, of sounds, of smells to Will, but all of it was incoherent and hard to piece together.

But he was, slowly but surely. 

Vecna stood there like he was this all-powerful general. He looked at Will like he knew him, knew his mind, and he had, to an extent. He had impressions of his mind, whatever information had imprinted and travelled from the Mind Flayer, but he hadn’t been the one who had done it.

He hadn’t invaded Will’s mind. They shared the same hive, the only difference was that Vecna welcomed it and he felt like he had power over it, but Will knew the truth. He was the puppet but he thought he was walking on his own. He didn’t realize that at any second, if he stepped out of line the Mind Flayer would pull his strings. Will was always aware of that. He knew the Mind Flayers disdain for Vecna, the self-appointed general.

Will had at least provided a challenge, fought back, tried to beat him. The Mind Flayer hadn’t appreciated it but it had respected it over this pithy self-importance Vecna felt. In Venca’s mind, it was about him, he was like no one else out there, he was special, he was chosen. But he was nothing but his own self-importance. He had powers but he wasn’t the only one who did and he used it for his own gain.

Will didn’t have the Mind Flayer in him anymore, but now that they knew about Vecna, he could almost remember him there. Everything was coming back so much clearer now that he was back in Hawkins. 

They were spending all this time on Vecna, but he wasn’t even the main one. But he was a threat because he knew how to open the portal. It was his experiment, but the whole hive knew it.

Will shook his head. “Vecna isn’t who we should be worried about. He needs to be defeated, yes, but he’s human.” He turned to Lucas, Dustin, and Mike. “Do you remember that DnD game we played, the night I went missing?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you remember what you used for the Demogorgon- it was a thesolahydra. Cut one head off, two more take its place. That’s what the Demogorgons did,” he said and his friends nodded following along. “Venca can’t. Vecna, when he’s gone, there won’t be another one. He’s relying on the Upside Down to heal him. But there still the core of it. the heart. We’ve fought generals- the Mind Flayer, Vecna, but there someone- something sending them out.”

“Vecna’s lair is the old Creel house,” Max said, realization dawning on her face. “That’s on the far other side of town.”

Will nodded. “We need to look at the heart of the hive.”

Venca fancied himself a conqueror, a king, but he was a mere pawn that could be lending to this all.

Will no longer had the Mind Flayer as a part of him, technically speaking. But it had left him with some sort of supernatural ability to sense it, but maybe he was just hyper-attuned to danger. He remembered when he was seeing Dr. Owens, how he said that he had PTSD, and they had gone along with that until it turned out that he had actually been possessed so they kind of just forgot about it.

But he had looked it up in one of the encyclopedias when his mom was at the grocery store so she wouldn’t worry. When he looked at the definition, the details behind it, he saw words like hyper-vigilant, seeing trouble everywhere, not being able to forget what had happened and all of that was true.

He wasn’t possessed anymore, but he remembered. He remembered everything about it. He remembered laying there in the lab while he sent those people to die. His mom said he was brave, helping them, warning them with morse code, but she was his mom. She loved him to a fault. And he had many of them.

He still felt cold all the time and he was scared to face it again, because it knew him, intimately, and when it passed he could feel it, almost smug I owned you, I had you, and you’ll never be rid of me, you will never be rid of my touch. Like it was smirking at him

I may be gone but you’ll never be the same.

It had left him with true sight. He hadn’t felt it, at first, but he had when they had been fighting Billy. It was like a mind-splitting headache, being able to see between the two worlds and then Billy was dead, stabbed through the chest and he couldn't help but think, just for a spit second, what if that had been him, too.

And then, just as quickly as it came on, it was gone as the connection between their world and the Upside Down severed. There was something he was missing, something about the hive, but his memories at the time were still spotty. But now that they were back in Hawkins, it was starting to come back, and stronger with every new gate opened.

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Nancy Wheeler

She watched as Jonathan kept to the other side of the house, still avoiding her. He had let her check on him after the attack when he first came back, but that had been hours ago and he was still quiet.

Hopper had come back from the station looking harried.

“Deputy Callahan is dead.”

They all froze, but Hopper wearily continued. “Chief Powell is calling the government in.”

“He can’t-”

“What the f-”

“Hey,” Hopper cut them all off. “I don’t like it either. But the station is basically gone now and we need to evacuate. Hazmat’s not doing it anymore.”

Nanc’s mouth fell in a grim line, but she didn’t object, couldn’t.

They all dispersed and she wandered, unsure of who to speak with until she found herself in front of the newest member of their group.

“Hi Argyle,” Nancy said, forcing a small smile. She liked him but she didn’t really know him. He was still a stranger to her and she felt bad that now that they were actually able to meet there was this impeding apocalypse looming over them and they could all very well die. It was even more awkward now that she and Jonathan were not talking.

“Hi Nancy,” he said easily enough. “I’d ask how you were doing, but all things considered…”

She laughed a little and let the silence fall between them.

“Jonathan told me about you,” she found herself saying. “He said you’ve been a good friend.”

“He’s been a good one too. I never really had many before him. Mostly just family.”

Nancy laughed. “You two are similar, then, I guess”

He smiled. “I guess so.” He paused face falling more serious. “Jonathan talked about you too, you know.”

“He did?”

“Well, yeah. He’s always been so gone on you.”

Her heart hurt a little to hear that. “Not gone enough to tell me the truth,” she said bitterly.

“I’ve been telling him that,” he said with a shrug, “but I think he’s scared he won’t live up to expectations.”

“I’m not hold him to any,” she said indigent.

“Yeah, probably. But sometimes you feel like someone is, even when they’re not. You get in your own head about it, you know?” He tapped his temple. “You, like, project your insecurities on what you think other people expect from you. It’s some pretty wild shit. 

“He said you are, like, so kick ass and you don’t want to be stuck here. You want to be knocking down walls and shit, which I think construction is a very noble profession, by the way, he was worried he wouldn’t measure up.”

“I make him feel that way?”

“I think he makes himself feel that way, which is a bummer on the self-esteem, let me tell you. And so he thinks he can’t do anything how can that compare to anything. Also there’s all this stress,” he gestured vaguely. “He hadn’t really talked about it much, but now knowing about all of this, I can’t blame him. It’s pretty crazy. But that makes things worse too, I’d think.”

“I need to talk to him,” Nancy said.

“You both need to.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jonathan Byers

Jonathan had committed to avoiding his problems and was sitting out on the curb while Steve inspected his car. Apparently between Max driving it (which she insisted did nothing and Steve was just being a baby about it) and blowing out the tires by the second gate, it was a little worse for the wear, so Steve was trying to tune it up while they still had time.

“Nancy’s mad at me,” Jonathan said.

“Yeah, no shit,” Steve responded, fitting another tank of gasoline into the trunk of his car. “Can you grab another one?”

He lifted one up and handed it into his waiting hold. “It’s that obvious?”

“Yeah, you both are acting super weird around each other.”

“Not all of us can be like you and Robin.”

“Robin and I aren’t dating, I don’t know why no one seems to get that.”

Jonathan winced, a little too familiar with what it felt like to deal with the assumptions of others. “Sorry. But you two do get along well. How’d you two get to be such good friends, because I would have never pictured you two hanging out together in a million years.”

“Shared trauma.”

“Well, that will do it.”

Steve barked a laugh. “Yeah, I mean technically, but no. It was because we talked to each other. Because of the trauma, there was this big, I don’t know, confrontation moment where our guards were down and we didn’t have to just… keep up with who we were regularly and then we just… clicked. But-” he pointed his wrench at him, “the main takeaway is we talked to each other.”

“You’re into talking now?” Jonathan asked, bemused grin inching on his face.

“Shut up, Byers. From what I remember, you weren’t much for talking back then either. Wasn’t really either of our best moment, if you recall. I don’t feel bad about punching you, though.”

“That’s fine, I don’t feel bad about punching you back.”

“That’s fair enough,” he slammed the trunk door down. “Seriously though man, are you okay?”

“What? I’m fine.”

“You’re really out of it, like, all the time. And I know it’s not just the weed because I know you’re not high right now.”

“I’m just feeling spacey. And it wasn’t bad on weed, it just makes things easier sometimes. I think it helps if my brain’s not so…there.”

Steve watched him. “Yeah. Maybe,” he said slowly. “I haven’t ever seemed to be able to figure that out. Ironic, I guess because everyone always said my head was empty.”

“Jury’s still out on the brain thing. Not you, um, uh, this. My, uh, head.”

Steve snorted, “I figured Byers.”

“I think it might not be,” he said finally. He shook his head. “It’s not. Fuck,” he whispered under his breath.

“You need some air?” Steve asked pulling out his keys.

“We can’t go far, not with-”

“I know. I’ve got music in the car. Maybe even stuff your pretentious ass might like.”

Jonathan snorted but his hands were shaking a bit. “Probably the Footloose soundtrack,” he said.

“You know, it sounds like you’re judging my music taste Byers, but I know that this is really coming from a place of insecurity. You’re just jealous because you wish you could dance like Kevin Bacon,” Steve said, sliding into the driver’s side easily, wrist flipping the key in the ignition, revving the engine to go with a practiced ease. It was smooth, effortless, and Jonathan could see, once again, why all the girls swooned at Steve’s feet.

He tried to ignore the shaking and pulled the door open, put on his seatbelt, made sure the door was closed all the way, but the actions were simple, routine, and did nothing to abate the jitteriness. He needed something to do with his hands so he opened the glovebox and tape after tape came spilling out.

“Some of those are thanks to Eddie,” Steve said, shifting the gear to begin driving. “He said we should have a variety of back-up tapes in all the cars just in case.”

“He’s got pretty good taste,” he said flipping one over to  look at the cover of The Smiths.

“That one was Nancy. She remembered you and Will sang it.”

He felt choked and he wasn’t sure if it was Nancy or it was-

“Do you think it’s going to go after Will?”

Steve fell silent, looking at the road up ahead, careful not to peel his eyes away. It was a stupid question with an obvious answer. “I mean, it can go after any of us,” Steve said diplomatically. “We’re some of the only ones left in town.”

“You know what I mean,” he insisted throat constricting.

“I don’t know man,” Steve said finally. “It would make sense for him not to, since he has been driven out before-”but  was left unsaid

But Will has been to the Upside Down before.

But Will has been fully possessed before

But Will still has a connection to him, even years after the Mind Flayer had been drawn out.

But, but, but…

He choked, head jerking forwards into his closed hands, nose hitting the cassette holder, but he barely registered it under the burning of the tears threatening to crash past his eyes.

“I’ve been such a shitty brother.”

“Hey,” there was the crunch of gravel as the car pulled off to the side of road and he head the gearshift crank into park. “You know that’s not true. Will loves you. El does too. She talks about that Star Track show all the time.”

“Trek.”

“Yeah, Star Trek.”

“El was getting bullied and I didn’t know. Will- I don’t know what was going on with him because I was there but I really wasn’t. But I should have been. Will doesn’t like to bother people so he doesn’t bring things up. Our father already left and I left while I was still there. But I just can’t deal with it. It was easier when I had Nancy when I didn’t feel like I had to carry this all alone. I used to be better, I used to do more-”

“Hey,” Steve said. “Hey, look at me.” He looked up at Steve with watery eyes and Steve puts his hands on his shoulders. “Will trusts you, he loves you, and I guarantee you he doesn’t think you abandoned him. I don’t know what happened in California, but I think the keeping-things-to-himself thing might have been something he picked up from his brother,” he said with a pointed look.

“I should have done more. I feel like I’ve done nothing.”

“What haven’t you done for them, Byer?” Steve asked. “And don’t say what you did is nothing, because loving someone, well, that’s more than half of it.”

Steve ran his hands through his hair. “Do you remember the first time we got along?”

“You mean when we fought the Demogorgon in my house?”

He nodded. 

“You knew what was coming, or at least that it was something bad, what with the way that place was boobytrapped. Weren’t you scared shitless?”

“Yeah, but I had to fight for Will.”

“You can fight again. This time for Nancy and Will. This time you need to fight for yourself.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Joyce Byers

Joyce almost couldn’t believe her eyes. Only she could, because of course this would be happening.

She had gone down to the driveway with Hopper to wait out the arrival of the government. They had come in with soldiers, as she had expected, but there was one glaring stand-out.

“What the hell is he doing here?”  she  demanded, jamming her finger in Brenner’s direction, and Dr. Owen’s, by extension. Brenner, in all his never-dying glory standing there in front of her.

“You’re speaking with a lot of disrespect to someone who’s doing you a favor,” he said blithely.

“You owe us,” Joyce said, jabbing him in the chest, intimidating despite the fact she was more than a foot shorter than him. “You kidnapped my daughter.”

“She’s not technically your daughter.”

“And you’re not technically be a sack of shit, yet here we are. You want to play at semantics, fine. I may not be her biological mother, but I am her mother in every way that matters. And legally, she is my daughter so stop trying to deflect.”

“I’m not trying to-”

“I’m not finished. You kidnapped her because you think she is a machine to use to murder people thousands of miles away, even though your super-secret team of scientists could have told you she couldn’t do that. And if you had ever even talked to her you would know she would never do that. You kidnapped her father because- who,  by the way helped to stop a Russian subplot to reopen the same portal you opened-”

“We-”

“Still. Not. Finished. You kidnapped him because he saw all of you take the things from the other dimension instead of putting them back. The very same things that almost destroyed everybody in Hawkins in the first place. The portal that opened because you opened a program and put yourself, some psycho who kidnaps children, in charge of it. And boy, would you look at that, one of them turned out to be some clinically insane murderer who killed all the other kids and then an eight year old girl had to stop him because those kids were never really protected, ever really safe.

“And you know the Russians didn’t hear about the portal from us. They heard it because you couldn’t keep your mouths shut or because you weren’t secure. So, you’ve almost caused the destruction of this town three times. You have the opportunity right here, right now, to keep that from happening again. It’s your choice,” she said, jabbing him in the chest one last time for emphasis.

He set his jaw. “Fine.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

Mom had pulled Dr. Owens away from Brenner, and while Will despised Brenner, he wasn’t sure how he felt about Dr. Owens. There was the betrayal knowing that Dr. Owens had been working for the lab and had been hiding a lot of things, but he had been a kind doctor and he really did seem like he had done as much as he was able, within his confines.

“What if Vecna tried to operate like the Mind Flayer and starts possessing,” Lucas asked, pulling Will back into the conversation.

Will shook his head. “No, you’ll know if you’re being possessed.”

“It could sneak-”

“It doesn’t sneak. It doesn’t need to sneak. It’s in another dimension.”

“When Vecna came to me, I couldn’t tell what was real and what was not real,” Max said. “It was like a dream but it also felt like it could have been any other day at school and it wasn’t until it was too late that I realized I needed to get out. I couldn’t tell until it started warping. And then I heard the clock.”

“That was what tipped you off,” Nancy said, writing it down. “It can’t do it without giving itself away eventually.”

“But who knows how many monsters there are out there!” Mike exclaimed. “There’s Vecna who apparently can be hurtled through the dimensions on fire and still live, the Mind Flayer who came back twice, and we think it’s gone but we also thought the gate was gone too, demogorgans, demo-dogs, demo-bats, probably fucking demo-giraffes for all we know-”

Max and Will had gone silent at the mention of the Mind Flayer, and Mike’s rant stuttered to a stop.

Mike’s face panged with guilt. “I’m sorry but-”

“No-” Will said, shaking his head. “The Mind Flayer could still be out there. It could have just sent part of itself over here, it could regrow. It was pushed back through. It would hardly be the first time.” His breath caught and the air felt cloying

“I’m not scared of Vecna- sorry,” he said, breathing out hard. “Why was it getting so hard to breathe?”

“You’ve got true sight.”

“What?”

“If Vecna tried to get you you’d probably be able to see right through it.

“I don’t know, maybe.”

“How will we know what it’s like if the Mind Flayer…”

“When he took over,” Will started, slowly, carefully, “I felt him everywhere. I felt him in me, going in through my eyes, my mouth, I was choking on him. Every inch of my skin, he was there, pressing into me.” He looked at them, at their horrified faces. “No, don’t look at me like that, you wanted to know what it felt like, it felt like that, you’ll know. And then your memory will get hazy and you’ll be stuck in a haze of awake versus asleep.”

El frowned. “When the Mind Flayer hit me, it blocked my powers. I could not explain, but it was like I got sick when it cut my skin.

Mike frowned, piecing things together.

“Do you remember,” he turned to Owens, “You said that it was like a virus.”

Dr. Owens looked guilty, but Will knew Mike didn’t care much about his discomfort. He had ‘turned good’ so-to-speak, but Mike didn’t trust him, especially after leaving Will exposed and vulnerable. Everyone else there had been indisposed, but they all came to help Will.

But maybe it was the context, or maybe it was because it was Will, but he knew what was coming next.

“What if we’ve been thinking of this all wrong. We think of the Upside Down as I remember it, but it molded so easily to me. A world shouldn’t change so easily, unless it’s weakened. What if the Upside Down was fine but it got infected. What if they're spreading because they were infected first.”

“That would make sense,” Dustin said, “Steve got that infection in the Upside Down, much worse than anyone else.

“But that was a freak thing,”

“Not exactly. Steve was pulled in, Nancy and then everyone just jumped in afterwards.”

“You what?” Jonathan said and Will’s eyes widened. It wasn’t quite a yell- Jonathan never had been one to fully reach that sort of yell- either by nature or because he didn’t want to be like Lonnie, Will wasn’t sure, but this was a lot. Jonathan's eyes were wild, the weed long since left his system and he was desperate. He hadn’t seen Jonathan like this since the hospital last summer when El finally knocked down the door to get to the Mind Flayer and throw it out the window.

Nancy for all her steely resolve a moment ago hesitated. It was easier, to barrel through it, to pretend like it was something over and done with, not another horror they would be forced to relive over and over for the rest of their lives.

“That thing pulled Steve to the Upside Down,” Nancy said, what would you have done? hung between them and Jonathan said nothing, looking between the two of them.  Steve, if anything, looked embarrassed at having been caught up in this weird fight.

And the thing was, Will knew Jonathan would have helped. He probably wouldn’t have jumped in first- he wasn’t ever that impulsive- it always took him a moment to work up to something- but he would have gone. But things were weird because things between him and Nancy were weird.

“This opens up so much more possibilities Dustin was saying and he was rambling about rechecking the gates for spillover, searching other areas for weakness or infection, and Will took the pace to drift over to Jonathan.

“Talk to her,” Will said.

“You sound like Argyle,” Jonathan grumbled.

“Seriously,” Will said. “You are always there for me Jonathan. And Mom, and now El. Be there for yourself.”

Jonathan gave a self-derisive snort and shook his head and Will was at a loss because they both knew that he hadn’t fully been there- he had mentioned it at the Surfer Boy himself- but that didn’t change Jonathan's heart and if he knew that something was wrong he would have stepped in. That was his heart.

“You love Nancy,” he said, a simple statement of fact that had Jonathan’s face softening. 

“Yeah,” he said the first time he had ever admitted it out loud to Will, but Will had known. It was his brother- how could he not?

“Then talk to her. Don’t throw this all away. You can talk to me too, you know.”

“Will, you shouldn’t have to deal with this.”

“This? Feelings are nothing compared to the other things we have seen,” he said and Jonathan cracked a smile. “Besides, Jonathan you’re my brother and I’m not a little kid anymore, I understand- not as much, but I’m getting there.”

“You have so much to deal with.”

“This isn’t the Upside Down Jonathan. I can handle you talking about your feelings. This isn’t a one-way street, you know? You aren’t just there for me, I’m here for you too. We’re brothers and I love you, okay?”

“Okay,” he said, nodding, and Will scooted over and hugged him.

“You’re a good person Will.”

“Who do you think I learned it from? Between you and Mom I don’t think I could have been any other way.”

 Jonathan ruffled his hair.

“Hey,” he ducked out of the way, “watch it.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Jonathan Byers

“Nancy,” he said, “can we talk?”

Their impromptu meeting had ended, everyone going off to do their own thing. He had been tempted to seek out Steve again to hide, but he had left with Robin and Dustin to check some stuff out.

Leaving him here, to face this.

Nancy furrowed her brow but came over.

“I know you’re busy with the world ending- we’re busy- but I was wondering if we could talk. About us.”

Nancy glanced back at all the empty table. “Yeah, okay.”

She took him in her car back to her house, away from the plans and the distractions and led him up to her room. A lot had changed but the sheets were familiar, just like they had been the night they really became friends.

“I lied,” he said in a quick exhale.

“You lied?” Nancy said, wide-doe eyed and he couldn’t do this to her but he had to tell her the truth.

“I didn’t apply to Emerson or NYU or anything. I only applied to the community college in Lenora.”

She frowned. “But you said-” her eyes widened.

“Yeah. Lying,” he said, an attempt at humor but it just fell flat. “I thought about it but I- I couldn’t do it. All I could think about was how we couldn’t afford it and I couldn’t- I can’t leave them, Nance. I can’t leave Will and my mom and El. My mom was falling apart when we almost lost Will and then she lost Bob and then Hop and I couldn’t leave them because what if something bad happened, you know? And I know that sounds paranoid and I shouldn’t feel that way but I’m so fucking scared I’m going to lose them.”

“Hey,” she said and then she was there beside him on the comforter, wrapping his arms around him. “It’s okay.”

And because he just couldn’t stop, he kept going. “I started smoking pot. A lot, like all the time Nancy and I don’t know why, if it was to make my brain just stop or because I was upset about moving, or because I was never getting out, but then I was stoned all the time and I wasn’t there for my family anyway, but I couldn’t stop the weed either. It helped, but it also made things worse and I can’t stop it. We’ve been out for about a day and my hands are shaking,” he said. “And I’m so sorry, I’m so, so sorry-” his voice choked in his throat.

She pulled him tighter.

“I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to disappoint you because you had all these grand plans and you knew what you wanted to do with your life and I’m just going to drag you down.”

She pulled away just enough to look at him. “You aren’t dragging me down Jonathan Byers. Never. I know it’s different, your family and my family, everything about it, but I know you care about them. I can feel it radiating off you, your care for them. And I don’t know what it's like to have those kinds of money issues- you said that last summer and it's true, I don’t. But I wish you had talked to me. Did you talk to your mom, Will?”

“They had enough to deal with. Mom, she would find some way to make it work even if it put her into a mess and I can’t- I can’t be a burden on them, even if they won’t feel it’s like that.”

“Then we’ll come up with a plan. We’ll do our research and we’ll figure it out, okay? Even if it’s not the way we planned. I love you,” she said with meaning. “And I’ve missed you.”

“I’ve missed you too,” he exhaled a shuttering breath. “So much.”

“Besides, I don’t think the whole Lenora thing is going to work out anyway,” she breathed .

She startled a chuckle out of him. “No, I guess not.”

“Does it help,” she asked hesitantly, “with the…”

He closed his eyes and steeled himself to the truth.

“No.”

He thought of the lighter afternoons when he was chilling with Argyle, but also how the trip could go bad so fast and he was just laying there on the back porch, paralyzed because he was worried he’d freak out and scare Argyle. He felt depression slip in more, paranoia, and he knew some of it was just fall out of the interdimensional trauma, but he knew some of it was from the weed.

“Do you talk to Will about it? Or your mom?”

“What is there even to say? It’s all so horrible Nancy. Do you talk about it, with Mike?”

She froze. “Not really,” she confessed. She didn’t really talk to Mike at all. I’ve talked more to Dustin about all of this than Mike. When we to mom, that was the first time we really ever talked about it, outside the heat-of-the-moment stuff.”

“Nance,” he said, turning, taking her hands in his. “I love you. I want you to go off to college, get your journalism degree or whatever you want. It’ll be four years from now. Will will be going off to college, My mom and Hopper will- I don’t know, probably be married by then or something- and we can go off take on the world, whatever you want.”

“I don’t just want it to be what I want, Jonathan. That’s a mess in the making. What do you want?”

“I want to be with you.”

She kissed him on the temple. “That’s a start. But I want something you want in that future, not just something we both want, something you want.”

“Okay. I’ll think of something.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers

Will laid back on his bed, staring at the ceiling. Dustin had left a while ago and Lucas was off trying to hang out with Max again. It was almost like last summer, only Mike was here and not with El.

“You could still win El back,” he found himself saying, out of the blue. He could feel Mike staring at him. “A confession in the heat of battle. That could be romantic, right?” Will asked, a bit frantic, apparently desperate to break his own heart.

Mike furrowed his brow. “I wouldn’t confess love like that, that wouldn’t be a real love confession.”

“But it’s all you need to say. If you told her that you loved her-”

“It’d be shit. I’d felt like I had to say something so all I’d say was complete and utter bullshit.” He shook his head angry with himself in this hypothetical. He tilted his head back and he looked like he was trying to hold back his tears. “Why would I let myself become like that? Fake and full of shit just so that she would love me? And she doesn’t, surprise! Surprise when I hate this version of myself.”

“Mike.”

“Don’t,” he said, “Will you’ve always been much nicer than I deserve.”

“You’re right then,” Will said, and Mike shot to look at him. “You’re full of shit if you think that,” Will said, determined look on his face.

Mike looked shocked, taken aback, but Will didn’t stand down, would not even offer to retract the statement. He wouldn’t about something that important.

“It’s for the best we broke up,” Mike backtracked. “I’m not sad about it. El isn’t either, I know that. The only regret I have had would have been saying that.”

“You’d have been brave.”

“I’d have being stupid,” Mike corrected, voice so firm Will almost was taken aback. “That isn’t even how a love confession should go,” he said shaking his head leaning back against the wall, sinking slowly to the floor. “And you just know this.”

“Yes,” Mike said vehemently. “It wouldn’t be outside a rest stop bathroom or in battle. The words would be better, more real. I would say you are my best friend in the world. I love the way you are, the way you call me on my shit. I love the way you make me a better person. How I always thought I knew what love was, but that was because you were there beside me the whole time. I don’t have to be anyone else besides myself around you and that is enough. God you make me feel like everything just to be that, just to be enough the way I am. And when I look at you it’s like I’m seeing for the first time, like I’ve been living my whole life in the dark, but I never even noticed it because you are so light I can see everything else.”

Will say and drew his knees to his chest, blinking away the sunlight that was filtering through the window down on him, making it hard to see Mike. Mike looked like he was realizing something, like something was finally making sense.

“Wow,” Will said as he pulled his eyes away, “are you sure you don’t want to be a romance novelist?”

Mike shoved into him. “Shut up. Romance is too boring.”

“Yeah,” he paused. “She’ll be lucky, though,” he said, “the girl that gets your heart.”

He chanced a look and Mike’s face softened, unlike the harsh lines that always seemed to accompany him. And then he blinked something sharp, like an idea coming to him.

Mike jumped to his feet and ran down the hall. Will chased after him down to the living room.

“El,” Mike said, all but flinging himself through the doorway, “what was it that Henry told you when you were trying to learn how to use your powers?”

“To take my anger and use it.”

“And Kali?”

“The same.”

“What about Brenner?”

“He said to not use emotions because they make you weaker.”

“Which was bullshit.”

“Bullshit,” she agreed.

“You closed the gate with that, you sent Henry through with that, but what if there was something stronger. What if there was love.”

“This isn’t a game, Mike, or a fairytale” Hopper objected. “Not everything has such poetic endings-” but El was nodding.

“Will could see Joyce and Jonathan when he was in the Upside Down, they could communicate through it. I could feel it when I was around them. Henry doesn’t have love because he killed the only people who loved him. He didn’t want it, he wouldn’t even bother to think about it. He was so angry, so angry for forever,” El said. “I don’t want to be like him.”

“And you won’t be,” Mike said. “You aren’t. All that stuff I said about you being a superhero, that’s not even half of you because you lived through hell in that lab and the first thing you did was become our friends,” he said.  “At the lab, all they cared about was your powers but who you are, with or without your powers is a million times better than that,” he said. “And I’m sorry I didn’t say it back then when it mattered but it’s the truth.”

“Thank you, Mike,” she said, tears in her eyes.

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Steve Harrington

It hasn’t taken much to convince Robin and Dustin to come with him back to his house. Steve needed to grab more of his things, he needed to sleep in an actual bed instead of on the floor.

Ever since the government agents had swept in, there hadn’t been much to do aside from argue with them, and frankly, Steve was just too tired.

But more than that, he needed to get out before Jonathan or Nancy used him as a buffer. It worked out because Dustin wanted to check for residual gates to the Upside Down in his pool.

They had stopped by Dustin’s place to grab his bulky array of equipment.

They went inside and made quick work of getting Dustin’s contraption out of the back. He left him out there,  setting up a contraption in the back to measure the energy or something, he wasn’t sure, but they were going out by the pool since that was where Barb had been taken.

He hadn’t really understood, just nodded and then retreated to his room to grab some things, Robin on his heels to help.

He was back down the stairs when he saw an unexpected face.

“Steve, Steve, Steve,” his mother said, pouring herself another full glass of bourbon. There were a couple used glasses on the counter. She was already swaying on her feet, which meant she was already a couple glasses in. She was too classy to use the same glass again. The same rule for buffets he thought absentmindedly.

His mother was the one who taught him charm, so much so that it came effortlessly now. Some of it was easy, the compliments, the personality. But his mother was the one who taught him how to refine that, make it perfect, so she could bring him to any dinner and they could brag about his sports accomplishments at the table with his father’s business partners.

The wives always tittered over his good manners and his charm, but not enough that their husbands took it as a challenge. They always slapped his father on the back saying, “That’s a good son you have there Harrington. Takes after you.” His father would give them his signature, cocky over-confident smile that said, yeah I know, and then as soon as the front door was closed, he and Steve’s mother would start packing for their next trip.

It used to bother Steve, until one time they left and he didn’t feel anything other than numb.

His father had been furious when Steve hadn’t gotten into college- the only time he showed any real emotion towards him, aside from the moment of pride he had when Steve was able to ride his bike for the first time.

“It’s a sign,” Steve said, placatingly. “I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study anyway. There’s no point in wasting time directionless.” He could see the anger building on his father’s face, but it was less than before. Steve knew how to pivot, how to seal it perfectly- he had learned from the best, of course. “I’m going to get a job,” he said confident with no room for challenge, but easy as if he hadn’t spent hours thinking of how to spin this, “learn the value of real work, start saving up anyway.” His father hadn’t been pleased but it bought him some time.

His grades weren’t great, but he had passed and he knew other kids with worse GPAs who had still  gotten into college. He just sucked at all of this- words and essays and all of that. He just wanted to do things, be someone that mattered for once in his life. He was starting to feel like that, after he started watching the kids, after the Upside Down kept coming back to bite them in the butt.

But now he felt helpless, like a little child, as his mother stood there, drunk off her face, refusing to leave. She sauntered over to the kitchen counter. There were three used glasses on the counter, and he knew that they had all held generous amounts of alcohol. His mother was from the south, they didn’t do hospitality in halves.

“You weren’t supposed to be here,” he said, and if she noticed the rudeness of the statement, she didn’t show it. “You said you’d come back next month.”

“The trip ended short,” she said, staring at the rim of the glass blankly. “Your father ended up closing the deal early, so here we are. Besides, the hotel wasn’t nearly as nice as the other ones we have been to. Tampa,” she said derisively. “Surely if you want to,” she waved in Robin’s direction derisively, “canoodle with your girlfriend, you can easily do that in a few days’ time. I’m sure I taught you some restraint.”

His father came in, king of perfect timing. He looked between the two of them, brows etched in a perpetual, judgmental frown. “You better not get her pregnant. I’m not taking care of some-”

“What? No. We’re not- there’s a gas leak,” he said. “I don’t know if you all heard about it, but it’s been pretty bad here in town- they’re evacuating. the military is here.”

“When isn’t the military here?” his father said, dry and bored, pouring himself a drink. “With the way things have been going over the past couple of years, I’d be more surprised if we went more than a couple months without them showing up. Encroaching on our civil liberties,” he scoffed.

“I don’t think that evacuating people for a gas leak falls under that-” Steve started but his father shot him a look that shut him up.

“We’ve got everything set up in the pool- oh-” Dustin said, startling to a stop at the sight of the two finely dressed adults in the kitchen. “Who are they?”

“I could ask the same of you. Steve who are all these children and why,” his father asked as he walked over to the glass door of the kitchen, looking out into the pool, “have they set up some sort of tv antenna in our back yard.”

“The gas leak,” Robin piped up. “There aren’t that many underground structures, so they’re trying to measure how far the gas travels. They, uh, dropped it off and asked us to set it up here.”

Mr. Harrington frowned. “Gas smells. That’s how they track it. They put sulfur in it.”

“They forgot.”

“They forgot?” he asked unimpressed. “That gas smells like rotten eggs or to put the smell in?”

“They didn’t say,” Robin said and Steve wanted to smack his face and cover it up, “but how do you think Starcourt happened?”

“So the gas company put sulfur in the gas all across the country, except in our county?”

“The gas main is separate,” Dustin piped up. “Because of the military facility. They got everything separate in case they were infiltrated but the Russians.”

Forget face-palming, Steve wanted to slam his face against the wall.

“Well,” Robin said slowly, edging out of the room, “okay. It was nice to meet you, but we’re going to get the stuff we need and leave. Bye.”

They left the house as quickly as possible.

“Dude your parents are dicks.”

Steve sighed. “Don’t call my mom a dick, Henderson.”

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers 

Will was lost. Mike had left to spread his idea and he just felt lost. He had offered Mike the perfect way to get El back and he refused.

He wanted his meltdown to be in private, but they were all climbing over each other in this place.

“Are you okay?” El asked

“No, I’m not okay,” he said, leaning forward, head in his hands.

“Is this about love?”

She knew his stance on it. It had come up after one excruciating afternoon where Mom had had to explain puberty and why Hopper had wanted El to keep the door open three inches. El had been grossed out by it all, and Will had just sat there wishing for the conversation to be over. But then El had turned to him and asked him if he had any questions and he said no, because he was never going to fall in love.

He pushed his face into his fist, face out of her view but he could feel the tears squeezing through his tightly pressed eyes. He knew what people meant about a broken heart. It was never supposed to be like this. He was never supposed to feel like this. It wasn’t fair to El, and it definitely wasn’t fair to Mike who had never looked at him like that. But he felt the need to confess at his feet, maybe it would be easier to get over this if Mike told him no, instead of keeping all of this in.

“Is she the girl from class? In California?”

“No,” he said, voice hoarse. 

“Why don’t you tell me.”

“You’ll hate me El,” he said, small as ever. Here he was pining after his sister’s boyfriend. That was a violation of every sibling code, friendship code, every everything code.

“Please? I won’t.”

And maybe he wanted her to hate him, he wanted to feel convicted and hated because he hated himself for feeling all of this.

“It’s Mike,” he said miserably.

El sat still beside him.

“I am confused.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“But Mike is a boy. On tv there are never boys who like boys.” She stopped. “Oh. You are gay.”

He froze, then nodded. “Society doesn’t really- they don’t people who are like that.”

“Well society made Angela and made a government that locked me up, so I don’t really care about what they have to say.”

He choked on his tears over a laugh. “Not everyone thinks the same way you do.”

“Jonathan wouldn’t. Joyce wouldn’t.”

“Maybe not.”

“Mike’s not my boyfriend,” she said after a minute.

“I know.”

“We both felt it. We want to be friends, not boyfriend/girlfriend. I feel better like that.”

“Oh.”

“Have you…” she said small. “Have you felt like this the whole time.”

“I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Mike said that you should date your best friend. You are his best friend.”

“So are Lucas and Dustin. Besides, he doesn't like guys.”

“How do you know?”

“I- don’t know.”

“Maybe you should ask.“

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Karen Wheeler

Karen felt like she was caught in a whirlwind. Just when she thought things were settling, she learned about interdimensional monsters and then the teenagers had raided her kitchen. Now the government officers were all crowded around the supposed next section, the entrance to the grocery store she needed to go in. She had brought smoke and his friends to help, but now she didn’t know if she’d be able to get in.

Nancy, Joyce, and Hopper were having it out with all of them.

“You,” Nancy snarled.

Karen whipped around in time to see a man with a name tag with Brenner on it. “I can’t believe you,” Nancy sounded incredulous, vicious. “After everything you’ve done you come back here to what? To ruin our lives?”

Brenner scoffed. “As if I would bring myself all the way here for something so petty. You think I'm going to let some bad blood get in the way of this?”

“Nancy, who is this man?” Karen demanded.

“He’s behind some of it,” Nancy said evasively.

“Nancy,” she pleaded, pulling at her own hair. “What have you gotten yourself involved in? You were supposed to meet some nice guy in high school, settle down, get married have a few kids. Nothing bad like this would ever happen-”

“Why, because that worked out so well for you? That picket-fence life didn’t stop all of this from happening in your own backyard. What did you think I would do? That I would just sit there and pretend like nothing was going on? I don’t want to be in a loveless marriage like you and dad. You just… put up with each other. You don’t even talk to each other,” she said and Karen winced like she had been slapped. “I don’t want to be in a relationship like that, where I’m too scared to ask what’s wrong, because it’s easier to pretend like it’s nothing.” Her eyes strayed, finding Jonathan.

“It may not have been perfect,” she said, drawing Nancy’s eye back, but the look felt off kilter, her whole everything felt off-kilter, but Karen pushed forward, “it may have been boring or simple, but that option is way better than a kid disappearing off the street every other week, or worse, dying, wondering if your kid is next.”

“So it was better to pretend like it was nothing? Will  went missing Mom. Will. He went missing on the way home from our house. Or is that somehow Joyce’s fault?”

“What happened to Will was terrible. You know I cared about him.”

“But you didn’t answer the question.”

“How could I not care?” she snapped. “Do you think I didn’t care? Do you know how many nights there were when you both were just gone- how worried I was?” She sobered, guilt wracking through her body.

“I noticed,” Karen confessed, and then she closed her eyes in shame because she couldn’t look at her and say the truth. “And the worst part about it was that I didn’t even care. I didn’t care about my marriage, and I cared about you guys, but I cared what everybody else though when they saw us more. I didn’t want kids but I still had them, because that’s what you’re supposed to do.” She opened her eyes again. “But I love all of you. I have since you were born, please don’t doubt that.”

She closed her eyes slowly and the weight of it came back too. “And then Billy…”

“Mom, what did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. But I wanted to. Nancy, you have to understand, I was lonely and he was handsome and young-”

“He was eighteen, Mom, he was basically my age!” Nancy’s face was contorted with disgust. “He was Steve’s age. My ex-boyfriend’s age. You're saying if you were at the pool when Steve was there you would have tried to make a move on him?”

Steve made a little aborted noise and drifted farther back, as if to say don’t involve me in this. “I feel for you mom, I really do. But you weren’t there at all. Not even about the basic stuff. When Barb died you said nothing. My best friend fucking died and you didn’t even hug me. You did nothing when Mike was clearly harboring a fugitive, basically, in our basement. Every time we looked for you, you weren’t there. Until we just weren’t looking for you anymore.”

She choked a sob but Mike cut in and she was flooded with shame that she would allow herself to be this messy in front of her two oldest children.

“We're strangers to each other. And that wasn’t us. Do you know how much I wanted to reach out to you but I couldn’t?” He had wanted to talk about what he liked but Ted wouldn’t listen and she had said it was all boy stuff and therefore not her domain. “That’s why I spent all the time at the Byers. You always talked all sort of shit about Joyce but at least she cared about her kids.”

“Mike-”

He pulled his hand away. “No. Don’t touch me.” He walked away and it was like he vanished into darkness, but Nancy remained where she had been standing

“I’m sorry,” Karen sobbed.

Nancy’s face was open like she was a little girl again. “Mom, I shouldn’t have-”

“No,” she said, “you’re right. I’ve felt it in me, this guilt for so long. And I didn’t know how to say it,” she sobbed.

“Mom,” she said and she rushed forward, taking her into her arms and holding her close. Karen held tight.

She pushed into the hug. Nancy didn’t feel like the little girl she once was, then she felt bigger, stronger. Nancy ran her finders through her hair. They didn’t feel the same, though. They felt like they were getting longer, sharper. The fabric her fingers were clenched in disintegrated in her touch, leaving smooth something. 

The hand tilted her head back just as she did and she saw this face, like the one she had seen on the kitchen table of the Byers house that Will had drawn, that demonic face. She opened her mouth to scream but his hand was caging in her face and she felt her head turn back like a lever, cranking and cranking –

***

Hawkins, Indiana, 1986

Will Byers 

Nancy pulled her eyes away from Jonathan, Brenner scoffing behind her.

“It never ceases to amaze me how petty you all can be. You see this Eleven? Do you see the frivolity that has poisoned their minds? You could be better than this.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Steve and Robin said, rolling their eyes. Nancy nodded in agreement and turned back to her mom. “Mom. I-” her breath caught in her throat.

Will turned in time to see Mrs. Wheelers eyes rolling back in her head and her feet were lifting off the ground.

No.

“Quick- what kind of music does your mom like Nancy?” Robin demanded.

“I don’t- I don’t know.”

“Mike?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “She didn’t ever talk about stuff like that.”

“I could try to-” El started but there was no point in it. There was too much chaos and it was too hard to focus, they had minutes. Minutes.

El tried to pull her down, but it was a losing battle. Steve jumped to grab her ankles, Eddie too, but she was too high,

“What song does she like?” Lucas was yelling.

“We can play it from the supermarket parking lot intercom,” Dustin said, piecing the plan together. “Radio us,” he said and they were off

“Think of a song,” Max screamed. And Nancy tried, but there was nothing and she turned to Mike, desperate, hoping he had something, but he was just as blank-faced and terrified as she was. 

Eddie was singing some rock cover, Steve was pulling out some old-timey croon but Will  couldn’t hear any of it, not really. It was all this cacophony of sound clashing around him, ebbing and flowing like a tide of light and sound, invisible to the eye. 

“What’s her favorite song?” Lucas’ voice crackled through the radio.

“I don’t know,” Mike said.

“What do you mean?”

“Nancy!” Dustin yelled, his voice urgent and crackling over the radio. “Nancy, Mike, we’re in position. What is the song?”

“I don’t know,” Nancy said, eyes wide in horror. “I don’t know.”

“Play something,” Mike yelled, into the walkie, desperate. “Anything!”

The parking lot speaker crackled to life with a faint song as Mike and Nancy screamed to their mom, trying to reach her but she was too  far out of reach. 

And then there was the splintering, echoing sound of bone breaking over and over and over again and Mike and Nancy screaming and crying. Nancy  was running, Mike on her heels and then there was the sickening sound of impact as she dropped to the asphalt, lifeless before they could even reach her.

Then Mike and Nancy were there in an instant and Will turned to the walkie they had left on the ground.

Will was there with them in and instant, Jonathan not far behind and Will grabbed Mike, who was screaming and sobbing, unable to pull his eyes away from his mother and Will pulled him close, pressing his face to his shoulder so he wouldn’t have to see. Mike’s body was shaking terribly and Will held him tight

“Is it working?” he heard Dustin asking. And Will, numb, picked it up. 

“She’s gone,” he said. He released the button on the radio and then there was only dead silence