Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

For the first time in her life, the body is at peace.  

It even seems like she might get to stay that way.  

She does not wish to leave this place. No, she revels in it; in the blessed, empty nothing. Nothing, the body is sure, is good. Nothing is right.

But the peace does not last.

Without warning, flickering in from somewhere else, lightning strikes. Red. Bright. Earth-shattering. It lights up the ether; lights up a world that has never before seen the likes of its brutality.

With it, the body is torn from death—and into something else.

She opens a pair of eyes that she does not have. Around her hangs a quiet void.

She steps forward on nonexistent feet. The water beneath her ripples like oil.

Words form in the darkness.

Where am I?

The thought echoes, too loud, too heavy.

For a moment, she waits in the dark for a response. Foolish, she thinks, and she is wracked with pain.

Thinking is new. Thinking hurts. She tries not to think but finds the action impossible.

Then she feels it. Something else, here with her. Something awful.

She has made a terrible mistake.

Around her, above her, beneath her, within her, the whole void shifts.

“Hello, Max,” says the darkness. And the power in those words shakes her nonexistent body like Jello.

Is that her name? Is that who she is? ‘Max?’

She tries to open her mouth. To—to what? To question? To cry? To scream?

Instead, she remembers that she doesn’t have a mouth.

“You are asking the wrong question, Max Mayfield,” says the void, slow and languid. “You are here—and you should not be. That is all. But believe me, I, too, find your situation… interesting.”

The void flows, and Max flows with it. They have no destination.

“Still, it hardly matters. What you should be asking,” it continues, practically purring with satisfaction, “is not where you are, or who—but rather what we are going to do about it.”

",” says Max, because she doesn’t have a mouth.

“They aren’t going to find you here, if you're wondering,” says the void. “No one will. No one can. It’s just you and me, Max. But you don’t even know what you means anymore, do you?”

Max claws with nonexistent hands at the blackness where her mouth should be.

“A pity,” says the void. “But a useful one. I will need a servant, as god of this new world--and here you are. On a silver platter.”

God.

Max still has a brain. She can feel it.

Inside it, a bell rings. Or maybe a clock.

It’s a sound that she knows well. That word, that sound… they remind her of a voice.

“And if I only could…” whispers Max Mayfield, through a mouth she doesn’t have.

"What?” hisses the void. But Max isn’t keen on sticking around to chat.

She may not have legs, but she still knows what it means to run away. So run she does.

And beneath her the water rises up, like the slope of a hill.

Chapter Text

MARCH 27, 1986

“Shit. Shit. I shot him five times. Out a window.”

“He’s a dark wizard, Nance. He probably voodoo snapped the bullets out of his body.”

“We set him on fire. How in the…” Nancy Wheeler takes a very deep breath. Tries to center herself. Fails. “How in the flying fuck did he walk away from here?”

Steve Harrington shrugs, and stares blankly at the girl in front of him. He doesn’t have an answer.

“We’re going to hunt him down again, aren’t we.” It’s not a question.

Nancy whirls on him. “We have to. Before he gets another chance at Max.”

Steve raises a hand helplessly. “We only found him in this crapsack place with help. How’re we going to do it again alone?”

“Steve Harrington, I saw what he’s going to do to Hawkins. What’s he’s going to do to my family.” Nancy furiously, mechanically, reloads the sawed-off shotgun she’s holding in a death grip. “We’re going to fucking find him. And we’re going to fucking kill him. As many times as it takes.”

Steve loves this side of Nancy. The side that always fights back. The side that’s ready to kill. But that ice cold look she fixes him with... it scares Steve as well. Almost more than Vecna does.

Nancy cocks the gun. “He can’t have gotten far.”

They turn, Nancy determined, Steve less so. They are about to leave the porch of the Creel House. Where they will go, they don’t know. But they have to try.

The building moans above them in the Upside Down night. 

And then, from behind them, from within, the teens hear the echoes of a clock.

A very specific clock.

They rush back in an instant, into the house, into the depths, to look, to hope, to fight. Maybe Vecna is there… waiting. Maybe it will be easy after all.

All they find, however, as they skid to a stop before the crumbling staircase, is a rotting clock. And, as if awaiting them, it is then that it rings out:

One chime.

Two.

Three.

…four.

They look at each other. They know what it means. Nancy pales. Steve looks like he’s going to be sick.

The ground beneath them rumbles.

The Creel House shudders as the Upside Down begins to tear itself apart.

As the horrified teens hold on to each other, the vines, the wall, anything, trying to stand upright, the house splits in two. From the attic down, then forward, then out, a seeping, glowing, toxic orange wound grows, the tentacles on the ground grasping at the earthen boards and tearing open the fabric of reality beneath them.

A gate opens in the attic.

A gate opens in the trailer.

A gate opens in the lake.

A gate opens in the street.

Will Byers is screaming into a cloud of dying Demobats. He is limping, ankle sprained from the fall between worlds. Not far behind him, scrambling with Will’s abandoned spear—Jonathan. He calls out to his brother. But Will can’t hear him now.

Eddie Munson is dying.

Will knows it. Eddie does too.

But they both pretend he’s not.

The wounds on Eddie’s side gape. Things spill out into the dark earth, things that Will won’t—can’t—look at. Eddie coughs.

Blood.

“This is our year, Byers,” he sputters. He tries to smile. His teeth are red.

Will desperately tears at his shirt, tries to stem the bleeding with the scraps. His hands soak with blood and do nothing.

“We got em, didn’t we?” Eddie continues. “Turns out… all those… fuckers needed… was a little metal. Guess… they hate it as much as you.”

Will is crying. “I told you, Eddie, I d-don’t hate it! Not when you play. It’s going to b-be ok, alright? Jonathan’s coming, we’ll get you to a h-hospital. You’ll meet my Party, for real this time, ok? You can… you can stay here. W-with us. It’ll be a… a good home.”

Eddie is shaking. “Nah, man. I think I’m gonna… go back… gonna, graduate. This is our year, Byers,” he repeats.

“Yes, yeah, Eddie, our year. Y-you just have to stay with me.”

“I fought pretty good… huh?” Eddie tries to chuckle. It sounds like a Demogorgon’s death-rattle growl. “Guess I could play a martial class… after all.”

Will doesn’t know what to say.

“You… need to fight too, ok, Byers? You gotta tell him,” says Eddie. “You gotta show them… show them Will the Wise… matters. You aren’t … a mistake, got it? Show ‘em what… what a freak can be.”

Will drops his head onto Eddie’s chest, shuddering. “I will, Eddie. I will.” He takes a deep breath. “I... I l-love you, Eddie. Please don’t go. Without, you… I…”

“I… love… you too, Byers,” Eddie says. The words struggle out; his voice is barely a whisper now. “Keep saving all… those lost sheep… for me, yeah? If anyone can... it’d be… you.”

Will hardly hears him. Not because he can’t, but because he doesn’t want to.

“Will…” says Eddie. For the first time, he sounds scared.

“I promise,” says Will.

By the time Jonathan reaches them, Eddie is already dead. There is nothing they can do.

And then the ground begins to shake.

A gate opens in the attic.

A gate opens in the trailer.

A gate opens in the lake.

A gate opens in the street.

Lucas holds a dying Max. The blue of the bug lights wraps them tight. Vecna is gone, but his touch remains.

Max tries to speak. Her eyes are pure white, and seep blood. Her limbs bend at impossible angles.

She can’t move, she tries to say. She can’t see.

She needs to know he’s there.

She has to know he’s there.

“I’m scared, Lucas,” she says. “I didn’t… I don’t want to die.”

Her vocal cords sound strained. Like she has been screaming a silent scream since the moment Vecna lifted her into the air. Maybe she has been.

“You’re not gonna die,” says Lucas, and he wishes to God that he believes it. He wishes to God that he could take her place. “You’re not gonna die, ok?” He turns to his sister. “Erica—Erica, help—”

But Erica is already running down the stairs of the Creel House.

Erica is running down the street.

Erica is running. She has to find a doctor. She has to find a phone. She has to find someone. Anyone.

But Erica is not fast enough. And no one is there.

“Hang on, Max,” says Lucas, back in the nightmare they thought they could survive. “Hang on. Please. Please, Max, I need you, I love you, Max, please don’t leave me here alone. Please don’t leave. Max—”

Max tries to say something more. Tries to tell him everything she couldn’t. Tries to tell him that she never wanted to leave him. To avoid him. To tell him that she couldn’t bear it. But someone has stolen her voice, and her lips are made of stone. She gasps for air that is suddenly so, so, heavy.

“No, Max,” says Lucas, as the girl in his arms begins to slip away. Except this time, it builds into a scream. “No. No, no, no, Max, stay with me, Max, Max—Max—”

But Max is gone now. Too far gone to answer.

And then the ground begins to shake.

A gate opens in the attic.

A gate opens in the trailer.

A gate opens in the lake.

A gate opens in the street.

In the void, Eleven is frozen. Tears run down her face, unbidden, uncontrolled. She sobbed before. But now she feels as if she is in another void beyond this one, and her body is outside of her control. She feels Mike’s hand in hers, in the bathtub in Steve’s trailer. But right now, in this place, it is not Mike’s hand she is holding. It is Max’s.

And Max’s corpse is all she can see.

She failed. She has never failed before. Not like this.

She was weak.

She let her best friend die.

Die to the man who promised her freedom.

To the monster who took everything from her. Mind, body, family, future.

Max tried to fight beside her. She was a hero.

Mike tried to fight beside her. He is her everything.

Mike finally said it. Mike loves her. And this time Mike did not lie.

But in the end…

It doesn’t matter.

It couldn’t matter.

Because Eleven was not strong enough.

And every reassurance, from Hopper, from Joyce, from Max, from Mike... Will… Papa… that she is not a monster…

Right now? They ring pretty fucking hollow.

A gate opens in the attic.

A gate opens in the trailer.

A gate opens in the lake.

A gate opens in the street.

From every corner of the Mind Flayer’s reach, the Party wishes to the universe that they could simply skip ahead two days. Till it’s over. Till they have each other again. Till they can turn back time.

But they can’t.

And as they scramble to hold themselves together… Hawkins begins to burn.

Chapter Text

When the shaking stops, Steve and Nancy stare at each other, the same thoughts racing through their minds—

What was that?

Is it over?

And above all—

Max.

"Did that thing just go… towards town?” Steve asks, the first to break the silence. A voice in that moment feels almost profane. “What does that mean? Does that mean… in the real world…”

Nancy is not listening. She’s looking up the staircase, up the wall, following the wound.

“It came from the attic,” she says quietly. She doesn’t have to say what she’s thinking for Steve to get it, but she does anyway. “If there’s a gate, right where they are… maybe we can go through it. Get back to Lucas. To Max.”

“At least it’ll be quicker than going back to my trailer,” shrugs Steve. He’s still clearly in shock. Then, at the thought of his trailer:

“Oh my god, Dustin,” he says. “You think the Demobats went back for him? And Robin?” 

“Max is dead!” screams Nancy, suddenly, uncharacteristically, and Steve starts back in surprise. “Dustin’s in trouble, Robin’s in trouble, we’re all in trouble, but Max is dead! A gate only opens when someone dies. You know that! And we’re here. We… that’s… that’s all…”

She presses a hand to her forehead, eyes now wide with panic, breath heaving. She’s covered in soot and grime. Her neck is starting to bruise from where the vines choked her. She wants to run up the stairs, to save Max, somehow.

But it’s too late.

She remembers Fred’s face before he left her at the trailer park. She remembers his obnoxious little grin.

She remembers when they found his corpse.

She remembers Max’s unerring, unwavering confidence. She remembers Max’s trust in Nancy and her friends.

She remembers the terror and determination on Max’s face when they split up.

Nancy feels an overwhelming, freezing surge of guilt.

She shot him five times. Steve threw about a dozen Molotovs.

They did everything right.

And still, a kid—a good kid, her brother’s friend, hell, by this point, her friend, a heroic kid—a damn kid put everything on the line for them.

And Nancy let her.

And Nancy failed her.

Nancy’s usual recourse for hurt and guilt is rage.

But now, trying hysterically to hold back another shriek of pure emotion, she doesn’t know what the hell the point is.

Everything Vecna had showed her is happening. Maybe it’s already done happening.

She sees in her mind’s eye the giant gates crashing into the library at the center of Hawkins. In real life, she looks out the door at the wound in the earth, vanishing into the trees. Red lightning flashes, stark against the sky.

What if her house was on the fault line?

What if Mike came home early?

What if Holly was in bed?

What if their mom tried to save them?

Nancy can feel her hands start to shake as she digs her nails into the wood of the sawed-off shotgun.

“Hey. Nance. Earth to Nance.” Steve is there. One arm around her shoulders. “This is bad. I know it’s bad. I think I might pass out if you give me the chance. But we gotta go back. Gotta try and do something. After all, I can’t babysit those little dorks if they’re all…”

Steve can’t finish. He was trying for a joke. It doesn’t work, and he knows it. But it’s all he knows how to do.

Steve keeps seeing Chrissy on his ceiling, breaking.

Steve remembers the rotting, decayed Creel attic.

Steve can’t stand the image that snaps into place in his mind, of Max broken there just the same.

“Sorry,” Steve mutters. “Tactless.”

“No,” says Nancy, voice tight. “You’re right. You’re… we failed. This time. But just this time. If those gates did open all over Hawkins… people are going to need our help. Just because we fucked up once doesn’t mean we’ll let it happen again.”

“We didn’t fuck up,” Steve says, with a certainty Nancy isn’t quite sure he has. “We did everything right.”

It’s somehow her exact mental wording. Nancy wonders, moronically, hysterically, if Steve’s psychic now too. “It just didn’t work,” Steve finishes, then adds, almost an afterthought, “This time.” He runs a hand through his hair absentmindedly, anxiously, still almost perfect, still trying to be Steve.

Nancy nods. “I’m… I’m sorry, I... I don’t know why...”

Steve shakes his head, trying for once to be earnest. “Trust me, Nance,” he says. His voice cracks, just for a second. “I understand.”

It’s like a rubber band breaking in a toy motor. It’s been maybe half a minute since all hell broke loose, and yet each teenager is immediately certain beyond belief that they have waited too long. They take the stairs one, two, three at a time, hearts pounding, caution forgotten. They’re terrified.

When they make it back to the attic, Vecna is still gone. Before the gates opened, it might’ve been an annoyance. Now it is a relief. There are no Demobats, no monsters, and the vines make no move to grab them. The attic of the Creel House is horribly, blessedly empty—but for the terrible rift right down the middle.

They exchange glances.

“Gate’s on the floor this time,” says Steve. “What’s the worst that can happen, we end up yo-yo-ing between dimensions?”

Nancy says nothing. She just jumps.

Lucas has never felt more alone than he does right now.

He’d say he was scared, but there’s really no reason to be. Not anymore.

He was scared—for Max.

But with her gone… he doesn’t particularly care about himself.

Lucas is still violently aware of Jason’s steaming, bisected corpse behind him.

(Though it hardly counts as company.)

He doesn’t want to be aware of it—his eyes are glued to Max’s dead, unmoving face—but he is.

Jason was his friend.

Jason was the leader of the second Party he ever joined.

Jason believed in him.

Lucas couldn’t, when Chrissy died, quite understand just how Jason went so far off the deep end.

But he can now.

Because all of the hatred, all of the rage, all of the searing, unstoppable pain he feels at Max’s death, the death he failed to prevent because all the right things happened to make it impossible—he knows now that Jason felt it too.

He’s furious with him, of course. It’s Jason’s fault Max is dead.

Jason nearly killed Lucas, which distracted him.

And Jason broke the Walkman. Vecna can only get someone without their song.

Yes, there is a part of Lucas (that he will feel deeply guilty about later) that is extremely glad Jason is dead.

But oh, boy.

Lucas understands now.

Because Jason might’ve sharpened the knife…

But Lucas knows exactly who wielded it.

And if he ever gets the chance, Lucas is going to hunt Vecna down like Jason hunted Steve. And Lucas is going to break Vecna the exact damn way that he broke Max. Except Lucas is going to make it slow.

He’s thinking all this through tears. Lucas realizes, too, on a deeper, more conscious level, that he has been saying the same thing over and over and over since Max stopped breathing.

No. No. Nonononono. No.

Or maybe he’s just saying her name.

Her tentative kiss at the Snow Ball. Her cheesy, teasing grin. Her calling him Stalker.  The smell of her hair in the morning after a Party sleepover. Her jibes, her jokes. Her dumping him. Working tirelessly to win her back, because he has to win her back. Her forgiving him, every time. Her shocked face when he’d told her about the Upside Down. Sudden, immense guilt, because he told her about the Upside Down, and if he’d just not told her, she’d still be alive. She’d still be smiling. She wouldn’t be turning away from him in the halls. She wouldn’t be shaking over the bathroom sink. She wouldn’t be dreaming of Billy. She wouldn’t be dreaming of Vecna. She wouldn’t be broken in his arms. She wouldn’t be dead.

And Lucas, in that deeper place, remembering every single facet of Max’s beautiful self, thinks that her favorite song is deeply fitting.

She wanted to take Billy’s place, if it would save him.

And now he’d give anything to take hers.

There is a sudden, strange whoom-THUMP behind his back. It’s staggered. Lucas wheels around. He’s prepared to beat Vecna to death with his bare hands, if that’s what it takes.

He is not prepared to see Nancy Wheeler and Steve Harrington stumbling to their feet, emerging from the gate. They rush to him, they ask if he’s ok. They see his bruises, his black eye, his nose.

The noise Nancy makes when she sees Max, shattered in his lap, is a noise that Lucas hopes he will never hear again.

There is a crackle of static. Steve is on comms.

“Dustin. Robin. Anybody. Come in. Henderson. Henderson, Buckley, come in, come fucking in. What’s that thing you idiots say,” he’s muttering, thinking, “Red Light? No. Yes. Code Red, Dustin, Code Red, hello?”

There’s a reply. Lucas can’t hear it. He’s not listening.

“Yes, Dustin, my car. No, I don’t care if you drive, I don’t care who drives, Max—yes, this is about Max—Dustin, stop shouting and move your ass—I’m sorry, what about El?”

Lucas isn’t listening, because Max just breathed.

El remembers when One tried to kill her.

It’s a hard-won memory. Papa forced her to confront it.

She hates Papa, for many, many things.

But this is not one of them.

It’s not the words One said, right now, that she’s holding on to for dear life. It’s what she felt when he said them.

Kali, her sister, told her that finding something that makes you angry makes you strong.

Kali has been proven wrong in a lot of ways. Mike just proved to El that a happy memory can be equally powerful.

But right now, El is very angry. She is holding Max’s dead hand, and she is hearing Lucas’s scream fade into a horrified, choking whisper. The void seems to draw in close. And El is remembering.

El hated Max at first, because she thought Max wanted Mike. In a fit of childish anger, she’d knocked her off her skateboard for it.

El is used to being petty. El is used to being angry. El is used to feeling like she is losing Mike.

She is not used to feeling loved.

But when Mike lied to her, that steamy, silly July morning—

The first person she thought of was Max. Because who else would understand just how stupid these boys could be? Max was dating one of them too, after all.

And then Max made her feel loved.

El had never really been around girls her age. But she knew that when there are boy problems, you go to your girlfriends. Mike told her that was what Nancy did when she was mad at Steve.

And to El’s complete surprise, Max opened her arms to El in a way not even the Party had. She wanted to see El for El, not for who she was supposed to be. Not for her powers, not for her history, not for her boyfriend.

El remembers Max, arm around her, stretching out in bed. Reading Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman had a boyfriend, but she did not need him for her to be someone. Wonder Woman was strong, and confident, and smart, and knew who she was.

El remembers spying on the boys with Max. She remembers Max’s hushed giggle. No serious “what’s happening,” no threatened punishment in the dark room if she didn’t do it—her powers could be fun, to Max. They were normal.

El remembers her day without boys. She was overwhelmed by the mall, by the people, by the noises, by the lights. But she was not overwhelmed by Max.

El remembers Max asking her what El likes. Not Mike, not Hopper, El.

El had never been asked that before.

The Byers have tried to treat El the same way. The Byers are kind.

But Max is righteous. Max doesn’t see El as a mystery to be solved. She sees El as a friend, not to be protected and hidden away, but flaunted. Max is proud of El. Max is proud to be seen with El. Max is not afraid when she is near El. Max is—

El can feel a sob rising in her throat.

Max was.

And El refuses to accept it.

“No,” she says, into the darkness. She is deeply proud of how calm it sounds.

Max would be proud of her.

She hears Mike begin to say something, to ask, to try to understand—

But Mike is not important right now.

Max is relying on her.

Max needs her.

And El is suddenly, deeply sure in that moment, just as she was sure when she blasted One into another dimension, that within her bones, within her blood, is the power to make, at the very least, this one thing right.

She lifts her right hand. Something roars through her, from the tips of her toes to the top of her head. A wind that isn’t there screams into her ears.

“No,” says El.

And, inexplicably, miraculously, impossibly—

Max is.

Mike is having a bad day.

Things seem to be going extremely poorly, and there is jack shit he can do about it.

He doesn’t have powers. He doesn’t have a homemade shield and spears. He doesn’t have the slightest idea how to play guitar. He’s a bad driver, the few times he’s been allowed behind a wheel. And he’s never been to the Upside Down.

He did tell his girlfriend he loves her, though, and he supposes that’s something.

He thinks maybe it helped. The flickering lights afterwards seemed to imply it. And the death grip El has had on his hand ever since would certainly hint towards it.

But he really, really wishes he could do more than hold on, encourage, and wait.

Something bad has happened to Eddie.

Mike knows this, because the guitar went silent through the portal, and Eddie shouted through that it wasn’t working. Or rather, it was working too well. The Demobats were coming through the vents. They’d make it to the gate soon.

To the gate, and to El.

El was in Max’s mind.

El was fighting Vecna.

And then Eddie stopped shouting, and Robin panicked, and Will panicked, and then Will jumped through the gate after his friend. And then Jonathan went after him.

Mike is a bit miffed about that. He wants Will here. And Jonathan. It feels safer with them around.

Besides, the last time Will went into the Upside Down, a part of him never came back.

Now the girl Mike loves is stuck, two layers deep, inside a monster’s head doing who knows what. And his best friend is out there in hell, trying to distract a bunch of things that Eddie described as looking upsettingly like Facehuggers.

Robin’s in the other room, pacing, muttering. But Dustin is in the doorway, spear in hand. At least Dustin’s here, he thinks. Dustin the Unshakeable.

Dustin the Unshakeable rests a hand on Mike’s shoulder. He looks pretty shaken, trying not to look up at the gate. The gate his friends had vanished through.

“Everything ok?” he says. The lights flicker.

Mike shrugs, worried. He’s not sure. But he’s glad for the company.

And Dustin, in turn, is glad that Jonathan’s car nearly slammed into Steve’s trailer, right when Dustin and Robin came to the conclusion that an amp and a boom box were not going to cut it as a distraction.

“El,” says Mike, softly, “is everything ok?”

He notices suddenly, to his consternation, that El is crying beneath her makeshift goggles. The blood flowing from her nose increases in volume, and the lights ripple again in waves. Mike begins to panic.

“El,” he says, voice cracking, “El, are you ok? El, is everything ok? El, get out of there, get out of there now, if you’re in danger, get out, I can’t lose you, El, I need you, please—”

Dustin steps back, spear in hand, immediately prepared for the worst. He spins around and around, as if Vecna or a Demogorgon is going to burst through the walls.

And then El screams—

The gate on the roof tears open, wider, with a horrifying squelch. It sounds like flesh being ripped apart, a sound that both Dustin and Mike desperately wish they were not familiar with. The orange glow of the gate begins to pulse, and grow, and stretch, and it almost sounds alive. The trailer shakes, and cracks, and all of a sudden it’s an earthquake, and Dustin is stumbling, grabbing onto the towel rack, and the towel rack breaks and he goes down with a thud. Mike is holding on to El’s hand, shaking her, shaking with her, trying desperately to wake her, because he’s not sure what it means; he’s looking at Dustin, and the look on Dustin’s face is one of pure, unadulterated terror because, Mike realizes, Dustin knows what it means—

The gate spreads. Mike can see through it now, and he wishes he couldn’t. Past the bathroom door, down the hall, past Robin holding on to the couch for dear life, the wall splits open, and the other side is no longer Hawkins. It’s the Upside Down. And the gate isn’t stopping there. It plows through the ground, unstoppable, erasing mobile homes and the people inside with equal viciousness, and there is screaming from outside Steve’s trailer, and the ground is shaking, and everything inside the medicine cabinet is falling down on top of Dustin, who is swearing at the top of his lungs.

And then, somehow, it stops. Very suddenly.

Neither boy is entirely sure how long it lasted.

“Shit!” yells Robin from the other room. “You dinguses still alive in there?”

Mike and Dustin exchange glances.

“You alright?” Mike asks Dustin, shakily.

Dustin tries to brush ceiling dust off his sweatshirt. “Physically—yes. Mentally—ask me tomorrow. We’re good, Robin.”

“Thank god.” She’s leaning on the broken wood of the bathroom doorframe. She shakes her head tiredly and looks back at the gate. “That can’t mean what I think it means, right? Because if it does…”

They all look at El. She's still shaking. And now both of the boys are screaming at El, trying to wake her up, because why is she not awake after that, where is she? Dustin is trying to say that at least she’s not levitating because if she was levitating then Vecna’d got her and so maybe things will be alright—

There is a crunch from outside the bathroom door. Dustin’s hand goes to his spear, and Robin nearly falls over in her haste to meet the oncoming threat.

But it’s just Jonathan and Will.

Dustin and Robin heave sighs of relief, and Mike wipes dust off his face with his free hand. At least they’re safe—

Which is when the three teens notice that Jonathan and Will are carrying a body.

Which is when El sits straight up in Steve’s bathtub, splashing in the water salted thanks to the abandoned Benny’s Burgers, and says in the coldest voice the Party has ever heard: “No.”

And every light in Steve’s trailer explodes.

Chapter Text

Everything that happens next happens very quickly, and everyone is yelling.

Mike is pulling El out of the bathtub. Enough is enough. El is saying something incoherent about Max in a voice that is alternately a yell and a mumble. She leans on Mike’s shoulder, goggles drooping off her pale and bloodied face. Dustin is running towards Will, hollering questions Will can’t answer because he is no longer crying—he is no longer feeling anything. Jonathan is on his hands and knees, trying to administer CPR to an Eddie who clearly no longer needs it. Robin is throwing open the door, calling for help, for an ambulance, for somebody with a medical degree, but outside is more screaming, screaming that almost fades into the background—almost.

They collide with each other in a manic burst of exhausted, furious energy.

“Holy shit, is that Eddie?

“What happened out there, oh my god, are you alright?”

“El, come on, can you stand up?”

“Jonathan, please, please, Jonathan, save him, Jonathan, do something--”

“Jesus H. Christ, can anybody hear me? We need help.”

“Max… Max, no, no, I will find you, I can still find you…”

There is no time to clarify anything before a figure bursts through the door of Steve’s trailer. For the second time, everyone expects a monster.

But El, and El alone, knows the face that appears instead. And that face is worse.

“Oh my god, there are people in here,” says Max’s mother. “Kids, this is a crime scene—oh my god, are you okay?”

There is a moment wherein everyone attempts to lie at once, largely because Dustin never quite finished giving his full exposition of The Plan.

“We… we were just trying to find our friend—”

“We just got back from vacation and we were going to borrow—”

“I thought Max lived here—”

“Suddenly everything started shaking—”

“Miss, please, this boy needs to get to the hospital—”

“I promise this isn’t as weird as it looks—”

Susan Hargrove sweeps everyone up in a hug as best she can, ignoring them completely.

“But you’re all alive?” she says. “You’re… you’re Max’s friends, right? No, wait, it doesn’t matter now. Are you able, can you help? People are… people have been…”

She’s pale as a ghost, and clearly at least a little tipsy. It’s a relief, because no one wants her to think too hard about the fact that they are inside a suspected murderer’s house. But then Ms. Hargrove notices the body on the floor.

“Oh, shit,” she says. “Oh, I’m sorry kids, language, but… is that boy alright?”

Everyone exchanges glances.

“I… I think he and my girlfriend need to go to the hospital,” Mike tries. He has to, because Will has not spoken since the trailer door opened, and Jonathan looks too overwhelmed to say anything more.

“I am fine, Mike,” says El, unconvincingly.

“You’re not the only ones,” says Ms. Hargrove, responding to Mike. “I came over because I saw cars here. Then I heard shouting… Hoped maybe… you see.” She points at the rift. “Can one of you drive? Phones are out.”

“Y-yes, ma’am,” Jonathan says, finding his voice at last. “But I don’t… Eddie, I don’t think he…”

Will shoves his brother, desperately.

“Yes, I can take them,” says Jonathan.

“Good,” says Ms. Hargrove, turning quickly. “I’ll tell the neighbors; we’ll bring people over. How many can you fit in your car—”

She and Jonathan hurry out of the trailer, talking business. It feels almost too easy, too simple to just roll with. The kids watch them go, and then turn to each other in a huddle.

“I am not going to the hospital,” says El. Her voice is weak but determined. “We need to find Max.”

“Max?” says Dustin sharply. “Fuck. So the gate… you mean…?”

El can’t answer.

“Do any of you care that Eddie is dead?” Will interjects, voice breaking. He heard Dustin’s explanation of the plan and Max’s role in it, albeit a critically abbreviated one. But right now, Will’s mind is in only one place.

He stifles a sob, and no one has the heart to be angry with him.

“I don’t… I don’t know what to do,” says Mike. “I don’t know what we can do, especially if… Max has to be okay, right? And Eddie needs help…”

“El, you did beat him?” says Robin. “The gate’s an accident? You won. Like before.”

El can’t look at her. She is trying to think of how to tell them, but she can’t. It hurts too much.

From inside the trailer, a crackling voice says, “Dustin. Robin. Anybody. Come in. Henderson. Henderson, Buckley, come in—". 

There is a mad rush to Dustin’s backpack. Mike is carrying El, and Robin nearly trips over them, so Will and Dustin get there first.

“Mike,” says El, “I need to tell you something.”

“What?” he says. “Is it about—”

Dustin is picking up the walkie.

“Harrington, shit, are you guys okay? What do you mean Code Red—is Vecna…? Did you do it, or?”

“I couldn’t stop him,” says El, very, very quietly. “I wasn’t strong enough.”

There is a crackling noise from the comms as Mike’s heart drops into his stomach. Dustin goes silent.

They all turn towards El, one by one. She isn’t talking to them, but she isn’t hiding the truth, either.

“He got Max, Mike,” she whispers, the enormity of it hitting her, in the real world, for the first time. “He… I wasn’t strong enough.”

The words, quiet as they are, seem to echo.

Robin collapses against the wall, and Will closes his eyes. Mike… Mike feels suddenly very, very far away.

He barely manages to dodge Dustin as the other boy rushes past them at top speed.

“Get in the damn car,” orders Dustin grimly. “We need to move.”

“Wait,” says Mike, but before he can say anything Dustin whirls at him, eyes wet.

“Max is dead,” says Dustin, with a finality that foregoes any contradiction. “Or she was, for a whole goddamn minute, and now she’s barely breathing. I need you guys to—we need to go get them. We can still save her. We have to save her.”

“Wait,” yells Will. “Eddie needs to go to the hospital too. And only Jonathan can drive.”

“Steve said to take his car. He doesn’t care who drives.”

The enormity of that statement sinks in very quickly.

As it does, Jonathan makes his way back to the Party.

“Okay, I’ve talked with Ms. Hargrove, we’re going to load up a few—” He stops. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” Then he notices the walkie. “Are the others—is Nancy okay?”

“I don’t know,” says Dustin. “But Max isn’t.”

They end up splitting into three groups: one to go get Max at the Creel House, one to go to the hospital, and one to wait at the trailer park for backup.  

Jonathan refuses to take anyone with him to the hospital. From what he’s heard, he’s going to need all the room in the car that he can get. Plus, there’s Eddie. (No one dares to reason that Eddie is beyond help now.)

No one is particularly happy about Robin driving Steve’s car without a license, either, but he did say he didn’t care. So she’s on Max duty. Mike insists he’s going with her because Nancy is there, Dustin insists he’s not letting Robin drive the Beemer alone, El insists on going because they might still be in danger, and Jonathan reasons he’s literally legally responsible for all of them right now but El has superpowers so at the very least she has a point—

The arguing lasts until Robin, pointedly, jangles Steve’s keys from around the corner.

“We wouldn’t all fit in the Beemer, anyway,” Mike sighs, resignedly.

El nudges his shoulder. “We will be fine, Mike. I promise.”

Slumped against the trailer, Will has not joined in the fight. It’s not unusual, but given the situation… Dustin glances at him, then back at the girls.

“El, do some psychic crap if she looks like she’s going to crash, okay?” he says. “We’ll… we’ll hold down the fort.”

El nods, attempting a smile. Robin rolls her eyes.

Mike’s stomach twists.

“El—you’re going to be okay, right? You’ve got enough juice? He’s… he’s not going to come back and get you, right? When we can’t help. When I can’t be there.”

El still looks unsteady on her feet, but she shakes her head darkly. “If One comes back I am going to kill him.”

"Good,” says Dustin.

Jonathan and Mike both look, worried, at the blood coating El’s upper lip. But she stares them down in defiance.

And that is that.

The Creel House is a flurry of panicked energy.

Lucas and Nancy are frantically attempting to give whatever first aid they can to Max; they wrap her broken limbs in makeshift slings, prop her head up, wipe the blood from her face. She’s still barely breathing—but she is breathing, and Lucas can barely breathe himself between his sobs of relief.  Behind them, Steve is still talking to Dustin on the walkie. Apparently, Robin is coming, and so is El, which no one totally understands—she’s supposed to be in California, right?—but sure, why not.

Everything—well, almost everything—is going to be okay.

The group starts at the pounding footsteps racing up to the attic, but it’s just Erica. She’s out of breath and, for the first time since anyone (including Lucas) has known her, she seems genuinely rattled.

“There’s… there’s no one around,” she pants. “It’s like the whole damn block went AWOL. Lights are out too. I think maybe the power went.”

“Makes sense,” says Steve, grimly. “Course it gets worse.”

“Makes sense? Where the hell would they be at this time of night?”

“Are you gonna answer the door to a pipsqueak covered in mud during the apocalypse? No? There you go.”

“Guys, please,” says Lucas, uncharacteristically quiet.

Erica turns at the sound of his voice, sass fading. “Is Max—?” She doesn’t want to know.

Lucas might be a wreck, but the look on his face is clear enough. Erica collapses next to him in relief, and the siblings lean into each other, exhausted.

Radio static.

“Robin’s close,” Steve informs them. “I have never been so glad that Hawkins is this stupid tiny.”             

“Robin is our rescue squad?” asks Erica. “What’s that nerd bringing, an ambulance?”

“My car,” says Steve.

Erica’s eyes go wide. “No comment.”

“We have to get Max downstairs somehow,” says Nancy, ignoring the banter. “But I don’t know how. I mean, if it’s… well. Steve, you saw Chrissy, right?”

“Jesus, Nance, you think? Yeah, arms, legs, jaw, eyes—pop. Maybe neck, but I don’t know.”

“It’s… it’s just her limbs,” says Lucas. “He didn’t get the rest of her. Not completely.” He runs a hand down Max’s cheek. “I don’t want to move her. What if we break something else? What if she stops breathing again?”

“We can’t exactly leave her here.” Nancy bites her lip.

There is a screeching of brakes, and a crunching sound. Steve looks quickly out the attic window and mutters an obscenity.

“If the world’s ending, who cares about a car?” he grumbles, followed up by a soft, “My poor baby.”

“Okay,” says Nancy. “Okay.” She stands up, brushes off her clothes, and assumes command. “They’re here. Lucas, you and Erica stick with Max. Make sure she stays stable. Steve, go get Robin and El and bring them up. I’ll…” She takes a deep breath and cocks the shotgun. “I’ll watch the gate. We’ll figure this out once we’re in the clear.”

"Have you ever driven a car before?” El asks cautiously, as Robin helps her out of the Beemer—now nicely dented by the Creel’s ancient mailbox.

“Never,” the older girl says, almost cheerfully. “But I’ve seen Steve do it plenty. I think I did fine, considering.”

El, having never been behind a wheel herself, decides to give her the benefit of the doubt. She stands, and sways on her feet.

Robin notices and grabs a shoulder to steady her. “Hey, hey. Careful there. Are you sure you’re going to be okay? I mean, yes, I know you’re basically Superman, but you just fought an evil wizard, and if you can’t do this I don’t want you to push yourself—”

“Yes,” says El. “I am okay.”

Robin isn’t sure she believes that, but forces herself to trust in El’s expertise.

The Creel House looms before them.

El recognizes it. Not from real life, but from the shattered pieces in One’s mind. He brought his victims here, she thinks. Victims like Max. It still feels like him, even from Hawkins, and the pulsing gate he made from El’s best friend beckons inward. El feels every muscle in her body tense.

They carefully squeeze past the rift and into the darkened foyer. El blinks: suddenly, the world is spinning. Grabbing onto the wall as subtly as she can, she assesses her situation. Robin is right; El is not okay. She’s going to pass out eventually. She’s already overdone it. But the pure adrenaline of the situation, of the glowing gate stretching across the space in front of them like a scar, of Max being so close she can almost touch her—it all screams that she has to keep going.

“Nice place,” says Robin dryly, looking around. “Vecna’s a hell of an interior decorator. Bet it looks real classy in the daytime.”

“It does not.”

Steve is waiting for them in the shadows of the staircase.

“Oh, uh,” says Robin, hurriedly. “Your car is fine.”

Steve groans and rubs his forehead. “El? Shit, you’re really back, huh? Couldn’t have saved my car at all, I guess—" He shakes his head at the look the girls give him. “Okay, sure, no time for that. Do you guys have… some way to get Max down here? Stretcher, maybe. Air lift?”

“Is she that bad?” says Robin, looking pained. “I’d hoped…”

“She is bad,” says El quietly. The boys turn to look at her.

“How do you know?” says Steve, confused.

El says nothing. She isn’t sure if she should. She isn’t even sure that she’s the reason Max is still alive.

“Come on, then,” says Steve. “Nancy is trying to hold off the Upside Down with a shotgun.”

There is a flurry of hellos and oh my gods and El you’re backs? But El isn’t listening to them. Her eyes are glued on Max. On Lucas’s hand glued in hers. She ignores everyone else and walks slowly over to them.

“She is… alive?” El says. She heard it, she saw it, but she can’t believe it. She kneels next to Lucas.

Lucas takes her appearance in stride. “Yeah… yeah. She wasn’t. For a while. Um, but then she was? I don’t really understand, but…”

El gulps. “But she is not moving.”

“He… broke her,” says Lucas. “He got her.”

“I know,” says El, and she begins to cry. “I am so sorry.”

“What?” says Lucas. “What, no—what do you mean?”

“I piggybacked,” sobs El. “From Steve’s trailer. I fought One. And it wasn’t enough.”

“Piggybacked?” says Lucas.

“From my trailer?” says Steve.

“It’s not your fault,” says Nancy. She’s still eyeing the gate carefully out of the corner of her eye, but she’s looking at El. “You’re the reason Vecna stayed in his trance so long? You saved our lives, El. If anything, it’s my fault. I shot him and it didn’t work.”

“But I beat him before,” says El, shuddering. “I should have done it again. I let you down, and I am so… I am so sorry.”

“Look, Max is alive,” says Robin. “And we’re all… well, mostly in one piece. You must’ve done something right. After all, you blew up every light in that trailer. Can’t do that if you’re not fighting as hard as you can. I’d guess.”

“I’m sorry?” says Steve. “You did what to my trailer?”

Lucas absorbs El’s words, and the resulting emotions swirl beneath the surface. He’s handled this sort of thing poorly before, he knows. Especially around El. But a part of him, from when he was twelve and suspicious, worries she’s telling the truth. That she did fail them. That cruel part wants to say, a-ha! I was right; wants to take the offered bait and be furious at her.

But it had been Lucas who’d worked with Jason, even if only for a bit. Jason wouldn’t have chased him, found Max, broken the Walkman… if Lucas hadn’t abandoned the Party for that psychopath. Just because he wanted to be normal. He feels sick at the thought. If Jason was “normal”, then what kind of monster does that make him? Lucas knows, rationally, that Vecna did this. That Jason screwed things up all by himself. But Lucas doesn’t want to be rational right now.

It’s not El’s fault, Lucas decides bitterly. Vecna is a dark wizard, after all; that battle was uphill the whole way. Lucas’s fight, on the other hand, should’ve been nothing, because Jason was just a normal asshole. The only one at fault here, Lucas thinks, is Lucas.

“It doesn’t matter whose fault it is,” he says at last, voice low. “We need to get Max to the hospital.”

"Ya think?” says Erica. Lucas is too tired to even respond.

“That might be a problem,” says Robin. “Nancy? It happened just like Vecna told you. Gates everywhere. There’s one in the trailer. Probably the other curse sites too. Lots of people at the trailer park are hurt, and probably everywhere else… Hospital’s gonna be busy.”

“Then we need to hurry,” says Nancy briskly. “Does anyone know the safe way to transport a critically injured person?”

Silence.

“Screw it,” says Steve, “let’s just lift her.”

“Wait!” screams everyone else.

“I can do it,” says El.

Everyone turns to look at her. She is still pale. Dried blood still runs down her nose. There are dark rings under her eyes. She barely looks capable of carrying herself, much less… whatever she’s planning.

"I can,” insists El. “I will lift her. You can hold her arms and legs so they do not hang. That way, between us, she will not be too heavy.”

Robin opens her mouth to say something. El stops her with a glare.

“I can do it,” she says.

And she can. It’s a bit of a mess, and Lucas feels like his heart is going to explode every time someone shifts their weight, or El has to stop behind him to steady herself. But, like a bizarre anti-funeral procession, the five teenagers manage to keep Max’s levitating body relatively stable all the way down the stairs. (Erica, to her annoyance, is on door duty.) The moment El, in last place, makes it outside of the Creel House, and Max is slowly, slowly let down into the back seat of Steve’s car, there is a collective sigh of relief. There’s still a long way to go before Max is truly safe, but at least they are out of that hellhole.

Then El passes out completely, and Nancy is barely fast enough to stop her from hitting the pavement.

"Hospital,” says Erica.

“I’m driving this time,” says Steve.

No one argues.

In the end, Eddie does not go to the hospital.

There is a furious and lengthy argument between Will and Jonathan, that ends with Will being told to accept that the living need tending to instead. Jonathan hates himself for saying it. Will hates his brother for saying it. But they both know it’s the right thing to do.

As Will tries to persuade himself of this, his brother and Max’s mom help a passel of folks into Jonathan’s car. They drive off in a rush. The injured who couldn’t fit start a frantic search for what few functioning vehicles remain, and follow as quickly as possible.

So now it’s three hurting teenagers and a couple dozen trailer park families they don’t know, standing around a fire pit, supposedly staying safe.

The boys don’t feel safe, though. Not this close to the gate.

Not this close to the dead.

To the east, in the shadows, lie four bodies. Each one is covered by a blanket sourced from the surviving trailers. The mourners watch their loved ones from the fireside, staving off the newly unnatural cold, and wait for the help they hope will come. They weep, they talk, they sing; anything to stop themselves from thinking about now.

One woman had been in her recliner, and the gate opened through her.

One man’s trailer had fallen into the rift. He’d been pinned down, crushed between worlds, and suffocated by debris.

The third, a child, had been playing in her bedroom when the gate opened beneath her. Mike can’t look at what little remains of her: he can’t help it. All he can see is Holly.

The fourth is Eddie.

Across the fire, a few neighbors are trying to decide whether or not to bury the dead here, or wait for the coroner and a hearse. It’s not a conversation the kids want to be a part of, so they force themselves, quietly, to step away into the dark.

Someone is holding Mike. He thinks it might be Will, but Mike is too lost to care. He’s beyond worrying about appearances. His family, his classmates; everyone he’s ever known is here, in Hawkins, and the Upside Down is here, too, and it’s killing people, and he has no idea if they’re okay. If he’s going to be losing someone else tonight. Mike is sick enough thinking about Max and Eddie; about El and Nancy on Vecna’s home turf. If he sees the shrouded forms one more time, he knows he’ll vomit. So, Mike stares up, up towards the stars peeking out behind the clouds, and tries (and fails) to forget that everything is wrong.

Dustin is staring into the fire. Mere inches away are the reassuring presences of his Party members, but right now, he’s not reassured. This is different from the last time they saved the world. It’s too quiet. Even after the death and the weeping and the earthquake, the world is waiting. Like they didn’t do enough. Like something should be happening. Dustin should be doing something. But Steve’s neighbors won’t let kids deal with the dead, Jonathan refused his company, and Robin left with El. Nothing is happening, Dustin thinks, fidgeting, and everything is wrong.

Will’s eyes are locked onto Eddie’s form beneath the blanket. He wants to look away, because it should be him there, under the sheet. Should have been Will dead in the Upside Down all this time. Instead, it’s someone completely innocent; completely unconnected to all of this. His friend. Eddie’s dying breath rattles between his ears, and Will shoves his face into Mike’s torso just to get away from it. It doesn’t matter if Mike thinks he’s weird right now. Will won’t let it matter. Right now, Will needs Mike, because Mike is all he's got—and everything is wrong.

Suddenly Mike’s chest shakes against Will’s cheek, as if he were crying, and Will starts in surprise and worry. Worrying about Mike is normal, Will thinks guiltily. It’s something he knows how to do, and that almost allows him to slip back to days where the worst thing Mike could experience was a black eye. He follows the shaking up to his best friend’s face, though, and the illusion shatters. Mike’s expression is a blank slate, unrelenting, eyes locked on the midnight sky. Mike is not okay; not even close. And Will needs to make him okay. He needs Mike to be okay, because Will is the one who breaks down when things get hard. Not Mike. Mike is the heart, after all.

Everything is wrong.

As they stand there, sirens begin to start up in the distance like a prayer.

Something clicks into place as they do. Dustin has arrived at a plan, and he clings to it like a lifeline.

“So,” says Dustin, carefully, finally. “Can you... tell me about Eddie?”

“What?” says Will. He tears himself away from Mike’s haunted expression. There are deep bags beneath Dustin’s eyes, but he’s trying for a smile.

“Mike told me a bit when you called. But I want to know the rest. He came here with you, after all. He fought for us. He didn’t even know me and Robin, but he threw himself into an alternate dimension for us like it was nothing. That’s… that’s the kind of guy I wanna know more about.”

Will’s breath catches. Dustin would have loved Eddie. Dustin should have had the chance to love Eddie, to play in the Hellfire Club, to hear him riff on his guitar, to sneak a joint together beneath the bleachers. Will wants to tell him. But each time he opens his mouth, the words just fall apart. How do you summarize someone like that? How could you?

“His name was Eddie Munson,” Mike says softly, from behind them. Will hadn’t even noticed he’d been listening.

But it works. And all at once, everything comes pouring out.

It’s like a slideshow, and Will is narrating. He’s ten years old again, coming back from a trip the Byers’ took just across the border to Kentucky. Mike, Lucas, and Dustin watch, rapt, from the floor. Will’s mom is at the projector, showing blurry pictures taken by a thirteen-year-old Jonathan, and Lonnie’s on the couch, smoking, smiling. A rare happy moment, before it all fell apart. The pictures start at the Ohio River, and travel down to bridges, small towns and quiet valleys. Then they start to click, click, click, into Lenora Hills, and the world grows darker. Will sees:

Will and El in their new house, unpacking things that belong to another lifetime.

Will and El, alone in the halls of Lenora Hills High School, mocked, degraded, unwanted.

Will and El at the club fair, wandering the crowd. Will and El, waylaid by a boy with long umber hair, a braid framing his cheek, and a wide, earnest grin. Eddie the Freak. A label the Byers are familiar with; a label they share. Yes, they’re all freaks…

But Eddie likes freaks.

Will, running his first one shot for the Hellfire Club; a test, and one he passes with flying colors. Unlike every test that Eddie takes, tests he fails, so that he can stay in school, with his Party, forever. A Party that opens its arms for Will the Wise, parting the shadows of California like Moses did the Red Sea.

Eddie and his band, Corroded Coffin, playing an impromptu set in the Byers’ driveway. Joyce running outside, hair down, yelling something about not being able to hear the phone. Joyce, happy anyway, because Will has friends. There is laughter, shouting, and music.

The Hellfire Club’s last stand against the Cult of Vecna. El is there, a stand-in for Gareth, out sick with the flu. The final strike, the final battle, siblings against a monster. For a moment, the slide skips, and a different Vecna leers through the projector screen—but only for a moment. That Vecna flickers away, and the Hellfire Club cheers, celebrating the slaughter of his namesake. Will, leaning into a rush of hope, thinks that maybe he could make this place a home.

There are secret slides, too. Eddie, holding Will tight, telling him about the girls and boys he loves. Eddie, staring at a picture of Mike, saying that, oh well, Will was too handsome for him anyway. Eddie and Will, under the bleachers, watching the football players, mocking them and gawking at them. Eddie and Will, watching schlocky horror movies in Eddie’s apartment, high off their asses, more relaxed than either one has been in years. Eddie and Will on the roof of the high school, leaning into each other to keep out of the wind, because if they’re alone in the world, at least the freaks have each other.

Slide by slide, Eddie’s story unfolds. Mike and Dustin huddle around Will, holding him, supporting him. In their mind’s eye, they see Eddie in his ridiculous Dungeon Master getup, layered over a leather jacket, ushering Will and El into his world. Will talks, the images shift and change, and that Eddie merges, bit by bit, with the one on the roof of Steve’s trailer, playing Metallica into the unending night. Two different kinds of heroes, in the same kind of man.

Mike is smiling, because it’s the most he’s heard Will talk in days.

Dustin is smiling, because Will is smiling.

And both of them allow themselves to be happy, because, finally, something is right:

Will Byers is telling a story.

New slides. A new adventure.

Eddie, slipping through Will’s window, DM’s Guide in one hand, notebook in the other, ready to plan a campaign they will lead together. Eddie, unaware that, this time, Mike is there, El is missing, and there are strangers with machine guns just around the corner.

Eddie, hauling ass across the house, freaking out, but always keeping himself between Will and the soldiers. Eddie, shoving Mike, Will, and their dying guard into the back of Jonathan’s old car. Eddie, digging a grave, while listening to a story no one would ever believe—and believing it.

Eddie, punching Will’s shoulder, because quiet little Will Byers and his sister have fought monsters. Eddie, laughing, because no wonder Will is so good at D&D—he’s learned from the real thing. Eddie, rubbing his hands together, scared, but eager, because Jane Hopper is a superhero, and he’s going to help save her. Eddie, saying that driving to Utah for Suzie’s help would be stupid, because they have no time, and that number is obviously a set of coordinates. Eddie, rolling his eyes, because what DM worth his salt doesn’t know maps?

Eddie, stopping the car, analyzing tire tracks in the desert. What good is it to be an army brat, Eddie says, if you can’t recognize an army vehicle? Eddie, proudly dancing like an idiot in front of a secret government site, because he was right, and there, right there, is the door to NINA.

The slideshow grows darker. Slower. The smile on Will’s face fades.

The California gang, driving, sleepless, through the Western US, pedal to the metal, to get back to Hawkins. El, between Mike and Will in the backseat, sleepy, head shaved, and terrified of what she knows is coming. Eddie, poring over a map next to Jonathan, squinting at the paper in the darkness, as they swerve down highways and backroads. Eddie, finding them the fastest way home.

The Byers’, Mike, and Eddie, racing through the dark streets of Hawkins, stopping by Benny’s Burgers for an obscene amount of salt. Jonathan’s car, nearly ramming into Steve’s trailer, because Steve has that giant bathtub he’s so proud of; a bathtub perfect for an isolation tank. Eddie, uncertain, out of his element, tying bundles of sticks together into makeshift spears. Eddie, wielding a trashcan lid. Eddie’s eyes, landing on Steve’s acoustic guitar and amp. Eddie, making a plan.

Eddie in the Upside Down, playing heavy metal on a guitar not quite made for it. Eddie, the perfect distraction. Eddie, and screeching monsters that fill the air with too many writhing limbs. Eddie, terrified; Eddie, brave; Eddie, fighting. Eddie, doing the best he can, in the face of the inevitable.

Eddie, watching the monsters come closer.

Eddie, watching them break through the trailer walls.

Eddie, making a decision.

Eddie, fleeing, not towards home, but deeper into the dark.

Eddie, who will be the bait.

Eddie, holding the monsters off.

Eddie, torn apart.

Eddie, falling, amongst the rotting vines.

"Will,” he says.

And then he’s gone.

In Will’s mind, the slideshow grinds to a halt. He stifles a sob, and the fractured memory fades away, overexposed, taking the last remnants of Eddie Munson with it.

“He saved our lives,” says Will, so quietly that it’s almost inaudible. “Eddie Munson is a hero.”

Mike and Dustin exchange one glance, and then grab Will and pull him close.

They know what it’s like to be a freak. To be forced into a story they didn’t choose. The boys hug their friend, and promise him, without words, to do their best to fill the void that Eddie left behind.

Will’s voice is muffled, face buried in Mike’s shirt. “What am I gonna tell everyone back in Lenora Hills?” he says, and it’s so unexpected that the boys have to stifle a burst of desperate laughter.

Because of course Will isn’t thinking about himself. About his own loss. About the friend who’d held him together in a new and dangerous life, the friend he will never see again. Even now, devastated, the only thing Will Byers can bring himself to worry about is everybody else.

Just like always.

Just like Will.

Chapter Text

“Fuck.”

In front of the Beemer is an open rift.

Blocking the road.

Again.

Steve briefly contemplates driving into it.

“Shit, dude,” moans Lucas, nearly in tears for the umpteenth time today. “There’s only what, four of these things? How do we keep hitting them?”

“I don’t know, Sinclair, goddamn—how is she doing back there?”

“Not great! What do you think?” Lucas sniffles. “Is El alive up there?”

She’s safely buckled into the front seat, but is still out cold. Steve pulls out a hand mirror he definitely doesn’t use for his hair and holds it in front of El’s mouth.

The mirror fogs, and the tension in Steve’s shoulders eases just a tad. “Yes, Sinclair. Now shut your trap and let me think.”

“We don’t have time to think! We have to move!”

Steve ignores him and starts drawing a mental image of Hawkins with his finger. “Okay. We started over here on Morehead. Followed the gate downtown, boom, all the other gates, wreckage, panic, police… no go. Now we’re here, on the east side of town, and Watergate cuts off all access to points north, apparently…”

“Hospital!” says Lucas in a strangled voice.

“Thinking!” says Steve.

He stares at his invisible map, willing it to change, then groans under his breath. “We don’t have a choice. We’ve gotta backtrack.”

A stream of quiet curses flows from the back seat. Steve grits his teeth and turns around to look at his only conscious passenger.

The bruises on Lucas’s face are darkening, though the blood has mostly dried by now, and tear tracks run down his cheeks. He’s sitting in the far left seat, Max’s head in his lap, stroking the hair back from her face in an almost unconscious motion. Steve sighs, looks up at the ceiling, and prays for patience.

“Look, Sinclair—Lucas. Shit sucks, okay? It’s not like I’d call this a particularly good situation. But we’re stuck. Unless you’ve got a better suggestion, we have to go back.”

“I don’t know, Harrington. You could jump the thing?”

Lucas doesn’t sound mad, exactly. More like hopeless.

“This is a high quality vehicle, Sinclair, not a damn Jeep. With our luck we’d just drive face first into the Upside Down.”

“Who cares? Maybe we’d actually make it to the hospital if you tried a fucking alternate dimension.”

Okay, maybe he is mad, after all.

"Well, I’m responsible for all of you idiots, and I do care,” says Steve. “So, sorry, kid; the only way we might be able to save your girlfriend and our passed-out superhero here is if maybe, and I do mean maybe, the roads back by my place haven’t totally collapsed.”

Lucas glares at him. Steve glares back.

A beat.

Steve turns back to the steering wheel and puts the car in reverse. Lucas swears at him, but Steve just whirls the car around with a screech.

“I’m gonna get us to the hospital, Sinclair. Don’t you worry,” he mutters.

Steve slams his foot down on the gas pedal and peels out back towards the Creel House. The familiar roads pass by in a series of grey flashes as, somewhere in the distance, sirens start to wail into the night. In the back seat, Lucas stares blurrily down into Max’s pale face. He takes a deep breath, and then speaks.

“I can’t lose her again, Steve.”

His voice is quieter now.

Steve doesn’t respond. He’s tapping the steering wheel, though, faster and faster.

“Yeah,” he says, finally. "I know."

They pull onto Morehead, then head east one street to avoid the gate. As the car passes behind the Creel House, the boys instinctively hold their breath, thoughts shifting outward. They are both wondering the same thing:

Where is Vecna?

The black bulk of the abandoned building sits, watchfully, menacingly, as the Beemer zooms by.

Is he here? Did he cross over to the Rightside Up while we were distracted? Is he looking for us? Is he trying to finish the job?

Steve speeds up. The house has vanished by now, and he’s going 45 in a 25, and Vecna’s definitely critically injured and not following them—but so what. Nothing about this situation is logical. Who cares if that damn house makes them freak out a little?

Steve’s eyes flick towards the rearview mirror, towards a sullen and exhausted Lucas. Nothing about this situation is fair, either, he thinks.

The image of Vecna still wavers before him, floating, a bloated white spider. Eyes opening. Meeting Steve’s. Face unchanging, and then what might have been a smirk. Tentacles, claws, temperature dropping, vines squealing, pressure in his head.

Shots, fire, and then silence.  

Steve chews on his bottom lip, and wishes Nancy had come with them.

Jonathan drives, but he doesn’t see the road. He doesn’t see the crumbling houses he’s known his whole life, nor does he hear the murmurs and groans of the injured in the back seat. Ms. Hargrove’s thoughts seem to be elsewhere, too. She’s looking out the window, as if waiting for something—or someone—to appear.

Jonathan is going to have to explain, at some point, what happened to her daughter. He doesn’t know, exactly, what did happen to Max. But he does know he won’t let Dustin take the fall. Or Robin. Jonathan is an adult now, and this is his responsibility. Not theirs.

Responsibility—

Jonathan keeps seeing Will, leaping into the gate. Like it was nothing. Brave, courageous Will.

Unlike Jonathan, who is still using the thrumming of tires beneath his feet to get as far away as he can from everything he’s supposed to do. Who has drowned himself in weed and guilt for months, because he has no way to tell the woman he loves that he can’t be who she needs him to be. Jonathan, whose family comes first, because they need someone. Jonathan, whose new sister is carrying the world on her shoulders. Jonathan, whose mother flew to Alaska to support them; Jonathan’s mother, who has no idea what’s going on. Jonathan, whose little brother needed him all this time, and—

Jonathan angrily blinks away tears. He can still feel Will’s shoulders shake against him in Steve Harrington’s kitchen, while Mike and El flirt and tease and joke like always as they set up the isolation tank. He can hear Will scream into the Upside Down. He can see the hope drain from his little brother’s face as the life drained from Eddie’s.

Will, who Jonathan has avoided just as steadily as his girlfriend; Will, who has clearly been so scared, for so long. Will, who deserves better than everything he has gotten. And what has he gotten?

A lifetime of mockery, of aspersions, of denigration. Jonathan can’t even imagine how Will must have felt when those insults started to hit home. How he must have felt, thinking that even Jonathan would hate him if he knew.

Then, on top of everything, Will lost the only friend he’d managed to find in California. And it was Jonathan who refused to take Eddie to the hospital.

Sure, it was logical. It was necessary. But Jonathan is cursing himself out; has been, since they pulled out of the trailer park.

For leaving Will behind, when he needs his brother. Behind, with Mike, who has no idea what he’s done to the boy he grew up with. Behind, with Eddie, who…

Jonathan remembers, through a haze, Eddie holding a joint of Purple Palm Tree Delight across the gear shift. Smoking together, waiting for Will and Mike outside a gas station restroom. Eddie’s easy smile; a shared sense of respect and understanding.

Jonathan usually struggles to understand other people. They don’t make sense; they have rules and beliefs and brains that just… work differently. Jonathan has always had one way of seeing the world—from the outside, looking in. Something most people never quite connected with.

But Will always did. And so did Eddie.

Somehow, in all of this unearthly, horrific mess, Jonathan has managed quite neatly to forget that fact. And this nugget of failure kills him more than any other: somewhere along the line, he had stopped being someone his little brother could trust.

Outside, through the trees, is a glimmering, radioactive orange glow. Jonathan finds his eyes sliding off the tarmac again and again, falling towards it with a gravitational inevitability.

Yeah. The Upside Down is a part of this, too. More than loss, more than self-hatred, the Upside Down has rooted itself in Jonathan’s mind and won’t let go. Jonathan can’t help but grieve, for a second time, the little boy who’d been taken to that false Hawkins all those years ago, and never quite came back.

It’s trauma the older Byers thought he’d processed long ago. He’d thought that seeing Will’s living face, holding him, taking pictures of him, making sure Will was always around to bathe the world in his smile; that any of that, all of it, could somehow make things better.

But the moment it had hit Jonathan, where he was, what it meant, as he climbed through the gate after his brother… The dying bats, Will’s screams, and Eddie’s broken body all seemed to become secondary.

The heavy, cloying smell of wet and mold. The suffocating air, like you’re drowning out of water. The moisture and rot that immediately soak your clothes. The eternal darkness, flickering red clouds, and starless sky. The dead grass, the living vines. The cruel mockery of home…

Will didn’t even flinch when he jumped through the gate.

He knew this place. He knew how to handle it. He survived it, Jonathan thinks with an ache he can’t describe. For Will, it’s not just an unbelievable nightmare.  

It’s the place he stopped being Will.

It was in the way he ran—unconsciously avoiding every vine, every crumbling stone. Lithe, unthinking, intentional. Swatting away monsters, even dying ones, without a second thought.

It hurts Jonathan, so, so much, to finally understand what Will had seen all those years ago.

And it hurts even more to know Jonathan was the only Byers who hadn’t understood it. His mom had seen it. Eleven had seen it, if only through visions. Even Hopper, basically an honorary Byers himself, had been there.

But not Jonathan.

There’s so many ways I’ve failed Will, Jonathan thinks bitterly. So many ways I could’ve been the older brother he’s needed, ways I could have told him he’s still perfect and good and Will, no matter what happens, no matter what he goes through. But no. All this time… I’ve been stuck in my own head, and I’ve missed everything in his.

In a blur of lights and sound, Hawkins Memorial Hospital appears around a curve.

It’s too soon for Jonathan. He needs more road, more endless yellow lines flickering in the night. There’s no slowing down now, though, and the echoes of sirens and yelling and chaos reverberate in Jonathan’s ears.

I’m sorry, he thinks, as he pulls up to the curb. He leans back, takes a deep breath, and forces back tears. I’m sorry, Nance. Sorry I can’t be the guy you need me to be. Educated, a go-getter, cool, whatever. My brother needs me. I have a lifetime of mistakes to make up for. That has to come first, no matter what.

Something inside Jonathan crumbles, but before he has the time to process it, Ms. Hargrove lays a soft hand on his shoulder.

“Are you alright?” she says. “This is too much for kids to handle, I know. But let’s just push through it, yeah? Sooner we help these folks, the sooner it’ll be over.”

Jonathan nods wordlessly. That’s the other thing.

Even when this terrible dream is over for him, Ms. Hargrove’s nightmare will just be beginning.

In their first real stroke of luck, the backroad behind the trailer park was, in fact, passable. A gate had opened in it—and Steve is not going to think about that—but a fraction of the left lane remained. In the face of the apocalypse, driving on the wrong side of the road is not a sin.

Steve had been going about 60 miles an hour, anyway. Blue and red lights flickered through the trees, and he couldn’t risk the cops at the trailer park noticing his car: after all, Steve’s a wanted man. Best to go as quickly as possible; if not for him, for Max.

Dustin would have called if something else went wrong. Steve has to believe that.

Dustin didn’t call, though.

So, in the end, they do make it to the hospital.

Hawkins Memorial is a mess. Ambulances and civilian vehicles and a few cop cars for good measure are scattered haphazardly across the drive, honking and flashing their lights. People yell into the night as nurses and EMTs run back and forth, stretchers and wheelchairs and equipment in their overfilled hands.

Steve finds the best place he can to pull over. He’s almost double parked, but the other car is empty, and every other spot is filled.

“Okay,” he says unnecessarily. “We’re here.” He turns around to face his passengers and clears his throat. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Lucas—you keep the door unlocked; don’t let Max fall or anything, just get ready to move. El, you lie low; here, put on this jacket—yeah I know it’s gross, just pretend—and we’ll hope whoever comes to help doesn’t look too close. I’m gonna go find a nurse or something. Scream my head off. I’ll be back in five seconds flat, got it?”

El had woken up a few minutes before they’d arrived. She’s still in a bit of a daze, but claws out of it with alarming speed when confronted, once again, with the potential of any of them being caught.

“No,” says El, “Not got it. You are in danger too.”

“Not this again,” groans Steve. “We’ve got bigger problems than my criminal record.”

“No, she’s right,” says Lucas. “There are actually cops here. I’ll go. It’s my responsibility. I—I screwed up, I’ve gotta be the one to fix it—” He starts fumbling with the door.

Steve locks it. Lucas looks at him, bewildered.

“Absolutely not. You, my dear sweet Sinclair, are a child,” says Steve. “I am a fully grown man.”

“Aren’t you only nineteen?” asks El.

“Big talk from recently-unconscious-girl,” says Steve. “Jacket. On. And Lucas? People aren’t going to listen to a random kid running up in the middle of all of this. Me? I command respect. Also maybe fear now, apparently.”

Lucas and El exchange glances.

“Regardless,” Steve emphasizes, pushing forward, “I will make someone listen. Max is our number one priority, remember? Not me; not my shit.” He looks back and forth between the two teens, eyebrows raised. “I need an ‘I understand’ out of both of you.”

“Are you sure you will be alright?” asks El, worried.

“I. Understand.”

Silence.

“Ahem.”

“I understand,” the kids respond reluctantly.

“Good,” says Steve. “I’ll be fine, okay?” He doesn’t meet their eyes. “Everything will be fine. Just hang tight—don’t let her die on us.”

Jonathan is sitting in the waiting room and trying to pretend he isn’t surrounded by a truly overwhelming amount of noise. It’s not quite as bad as the last time he was here, fighting off a horrific flesh amalgamation made out of his former coworkers. But it’s hardly fun.

Ms. Hargrove sits beside him, answering intake questions from a nurse. The docs here had felt the earthquake—shocker, that—and despite the general state of disarray, were at least somewhat prepared by the time Jonathan’s car had arrived. As they’d pulled up in front of the emergency room, nurses and EMTs were already rushing out to meet them.

Jonathan had tried not to pay any attention to the other ambulances, loading out and loading back in. The mess of stretchers and flashing lights. Who else is here? he has to stop himself from thinking for the thirtieth time. Sure, it’s not like he has great memories of anyone in Hawkins… but he certainly doesn’t want them to come back to him in a body bag.

Jonathan hates that image; hates hospitals, especially this one, and what they have always meant for him. He would rather be anywhere else, but he can’t go. Not now. Not like this.

Ms. Hargrove did try to make Jonathan leave. To take care of his family, take care of Will, back at the trailer park. Jonathan refused: he’s her ride, after all. What if people need to make it home tonight? What if Max shows up? They can’t walk home.

No, it’s safer to stay. It’s the right thing to do.  

But Jonathan’s mind still hisses: Coward. His knees bounce as he tries to push past the guilt, to the right excuse, the right apology, the right anything to say the next time he sees his brother. His brother, who Jonathan cannot even make himself run away to protect. His brother, who deserves to feel safe and loved. His brother, who might, if Jonathan ever makes the right decision, grant him a modicum of the forgiveness he is sure he does not deserve.

Jonathan is so furious with himself that he doesn’t notice the commotion in the entryway at first.

“Seriously? Seriously, man, now’s really the time you wanna do this? In case you didn’t—oof—notice, there’s a bit of an emergency--”

Jonathan frowns, and stares even more intently at his beat-up sneakers. Who’d be making a scene now? Here? he thinks. That voice sounds familiar…

“My friend is dying, come on, just get somebody out to her and you can do whatever you want to me—"

Jonathan drags his head up, slowly, away from the scuffed tiles.

It’s Steve goddamn Harrington. At the front door. Being handcuffed by a cop.

Jonathan goes pale. If Steve is here—

He jumps up and runs towards them.

“What—what’s going on, why are you—” he starts, before he’s even there. It’s a stupid question. “Where’s M—”

He can’t make himself say it.

Ms. Hargrove is getting up from the bench now, too. She’s calling out—what’s wrong, what’s the problem, should I call a nurse? She hasn’t followed Jonathan yet, though. Small blessings. Maybe he can get this sorted, before—

“Byers, thank god. Get a doctor, will you, you actually know what’s going on and have half a brain—”

“Careful, Harrington,” snarls the officer. He snaps the handcuffs closed. “You’re lucky I don’t shoot you where you stand. Shut your mouth and get moving.”

“Wait,” sputters Jonathan. He’s heard a bit about Steve’s predicament, but it’s still so absurd that he hadn’t fully believed it. “Come on. He’s innocent, you can't really believe—”

“Yeah, of course I'm innocent, but that’s not really the—”

The officer elbows Steve in the side, and his words vanish in a wheeze.

"You are that Byers kid,” says the officer, turning to Jonathan. Jonathan thinks he might recognize him—barely. The Byers family has seen far more than its fair share of the Hawkins police force. “Thought you folks had left town. You have something to do with this?”

"This? No, I…” Jonathan says, before changing tack. “My brother’s friends were with Steve. I just want to know if they’re okay.”

“No clue,” says the officer, “but if they were around this monster? I'd be worried, too.”

“They’re fine,” insists Steve, but the officer jabs him again.

Jonathan is about to ask something else, but with a pattering of feet, now Lucas is there too.

The officer groans.

“Come on, not more kids.” He pulls out his walkie. “Jerry? Send backup to the hospital, will ya? We found the perp—"

“Look, officer,” Steve says, annoyed, straining against the handcuffs, “this is all some sort of misunderstanding and whatever else I’m supposed to say, but we have a kid in critical condition in my car and she needs help—”

“Yeah,” says Lucas, “what the hell is taking so long, I don’t want to leave her—"

“Jonathan? What’s going on?”

Now Ms. Hargrove is there, alongside a nurse, and Jonathan knows there is no escape.

“Officer Cray, if they really have someone out there, we need to bring them in,” says the nurse. “You should have said something.”

“For all we know, this hooligan is the reason she’s hurt,” Officer-apparently-Cray says, jaw set. “He’s killed three people, Carrie. You know that. He could be here to kill again. Don’t blame me for not trusting him.”

“Are you shitting me?” yells Lucas, and everyone turns to look at him. “Max is stuck outside, barely breathing, and you’re arguing about your bullshit conspiracy theory? I was there. Steve didn’t touch her; I swear on my life! It’s not like he’s ever won a fight, anyway,” he adds, almost as an aside. “Max would kick his ass.”

Steve makes a vaguely affronted noise. Everyone ignores him, because Lucas is already on to his next point.

“He brought us to the hospital,” the boy spits. “Why would a murderer bring a victim to the hospital? I’m alive, aren’t I? Come on, assholes! Let him go, go get Max, save some shit already. Aren’t you supposed to be serving and protecting, or something?”

The nurse quickly pulls Lucas aside, asking questions under her breath and guiding him towards the door. It’s probably a good thing, too, because Officer Cray looks like he’s fully prepared to serve more than protect, kid or not.

Steve, meanwhile, meets Jonathan’s eyes, and the look they exchange is weighted.

“Come on, Byers,” he says. “Put in a good word for me here, yeah?”

“I mean, I wasn’t even in Indiana when…”

Steve raises his eyebrows.

“But, of course you didn’t,” Jonathan continues hurriedly. “I just don’t know what I could say that would possibly—” Jonathan stops. There’s a hand gripping his arm. Tight.

He has managed to forget the other person listening to the conversation.

“Did… that boy… was that...”

Jonathan turns, very slowly, to look at Ms. Hargrove. She’s staring past him. Towards Lucas, but past him too—towards the darkness outside.

“Ms. Hargrove,” Jonathan starts, and Steve goes rigid in sudden recognition.

“Lucas, honey?” she says, very softly.

Even a dozen feet away by the door, Lucas hears her. He flinches.

“You don’t mean my Max.” It’s a vain hope, and Ms. Hargrove knows it.

The nurse beside Lucas looks back, then to the terrified boy beside her, and ushers him out into the night as fast as she can.

Steve sighs heavily. “Look… Ms. Hargrove?”

Slowly, slowly, she turns to stare at him.

He attempts to continue. “We’re neighbors, yeah? I’ve seen you around, we usually both leave for work at the same time, Max comes to my place some afternoons. We know each other. You know I’d never hurt her, the earthquake hit and I—”

Steve keeps trying, grasping at straws to explain the unbelievable, but rambles on for long enough that even he wouldn’t believe a word of it.

“She’s alive,” he adds, lamely. That fact seems important. “Just… unconscious.”  

Ms. Hargrove is on him in an instant. Officer Cray and Jonathan both try to hold her back, but not much can stand in the way of a tipsy, exhausted, and grieving mother.

“What did you do, you no-good son-of-a-bitch?” she screams, and it’s a kind of rage that Jonathan is intimately familiar with. “I knew there was something wrong with you the moment you moved in. You did kill that Cunningham girl, didn’t you, and those poor boys, and now you come for my daughter? How dare you?”

Her hands are shaking, her hair is wild, and her voice is terrifying. Steve is shocked completely into silence, but Ms. Hargrove isn’t done. She grabs his collar, leans in, inches from his face, and spits out in a furious whisper:

"What did you do to my Maxine?”

Steve flinches, waiting for more, but everyone is watching. Expecting an answer.

“I…I didn’t, I didn’t do anything,” he sputters, as Jonathan and Officer Cray attempt to wrangle Ms. Hargrove off of him. “I brought her here, like Lucas said. She, he broke her…” Steve trails off. “Ms. Hargrove, I swear to God, I am not a murderer.”

“Oh, sure you aren’t. Hiding off in the woods? Showing up at the scene of every. Single. Crime?” Ms. Hargrove breaks free from Jonathan’s hand and swings at Steve’s face with each word.

Steve ducks away from the first punch, but as he does so, Jonathan sees the last bit of fight in his face wink out.

He doesn’t dodge the next one.

“Yeah,” Steve says quietly, as Ms. Hargrove staggers back. Like she can’t believe she hit him.  “Yeah. I was there. Real fucking lucky, right? I was there and I still couldn’t do shit to save her, or any of those other kids. Max… she’s a good person, Ms. Hargrove. She’s brave as hell. She didn’t deserve…”

Jonathan’s eyes widen. For the first time in his life, it looks like Steve Harrington is about to cry.

Steve’s breath shudders, and he says the words. “I am so, fucking, sorry.”

Then he collapses against the wall.

There’s a moment where no one speaks.

“But she is alive,” Steve finishes. And Ms. Hargrove doesn’t try to hit him this time.

“Plenty of time for excuses down at the station,” says Officer Clay, finally. “This poor woman has had enough of a night, don’t need to put her through more of it here. Ms. Hargrove—I’ll make sure this man is taken care of, all right? Your daughter is safe now. Justice will be served, as promised.”

Ms. Hargrove doesn’t respond. She looks stunned. Empty. Scared of her own anger, shocked at Steve’s words, unsure how to cope with any of it.

Steve locks eyes with Jonathan again. He looks defeated. Completely lost. Completely unlike Steve.

“Take care of the little assholes, alright?” he says evenly. “Guess I’m not cut out for babysitting after all.”

“Steve, come on… Officer, wait—"

Steve is led away and doesn’t look back.

Jonathan opens his mouth. Closes it. Hears his mom’s voice: Jonathan, you look like a goldfish. Ms. Hargrove is still standing there, holding on to his arm, shaking.

“Max,” she whispers. “What have I done?”

Then the doors fly open, and a team of nurses and EMTs rush in carrying a stretcher.

Max. Oxygen mask on, carefully secured, pale, hollow. Lucas is there and shaking too, and El is holding his hand, and the nurses are calling for doctors and surgery and a dozen other things Jonathan doesn’t know enough about hospitals to understand.

They rush past, no waiting, no questions. Max’s stretcher has just made it to the doors of the elevator when Ms. Hargrove starts to scream.

Nancy Wheeler is walking home.

On one side of her is Robin. On the other side is Erica.

Gripped tightly in her hands is the sawed-off shotgun.

The night is dark and quiet, too quiet, and Nancy is abstractly aware that she looks completely crazy right now. But everything is crazy.

And still, they are walking home.

The girls had uniformly decided that, given the lack of space and the immediacy of need, Steve should go to the hospital without them.

Even Erica hadn’t complained.

They’re all regretting it, a bit selfishly, because the night is dark and quiet and somewhere out there are monsters.

Robin hears a branch break, sees a stray leaf fall, and imagines grasping claws and beating wings.

Erica hears the echoes of her own pounding heart, and wonders if Jason’s asshole friends are following them.

Nancy hears nothing. But she sees what Vecna showed her, playing out in front of her eyes on a screen of shadows, again and again and again.

They’ve tried to stick to the streets with the power still on. Their luck has been sporadic, though, and the attempt keeps leading them further from the center of town.

Each house they pass is a tableau. This one dark, this one frantic. People outside of this one, helping relatives and neighbors out from under a collapsed roof. A car fire. A house fire. An open door, and an empty driveway.

Nancy tries to stay between the destruction and Erica. The younger girl gives her an exasperated look the first couple times—“You know I’m not a child anymore, Nancy”—until the second burning house. Then she stops complaining.

The haunting images repeat, over and over. No matter the size of the house or the quality of the neighborhood, each part of Hawkins echoes the others now. It only makes the girls walk faster—the urge to stop and help is strong, but the urge to escape the night and return to their hopefully living families is stronger.

Then they cross the second gate—a surprisingly easy jump, once they find a narrow crossing—the lights go out completely, and they’re left only with the light of the bug lamp Robin had wisely decided to bring.

Nancy eyes the flickering blue, and is overcome by, for what feels like the millionth time tonight, a surge of guilt.

“I’m realizing I have no idea where you live.” She looks over her shoulder at Robin. The other girl hangs back, eyes tracking the swooping arc of fallen power lines. “You should come stay with us tonight. The Sinclair’s live next door to me, so Erica and I are going in the same direction. I don’t want you out here alone.”

“Oh. No, no, I live on this side of town anyway, it’s totally fine,” says Robin. “Almost home as it is. But if I didn’t, I would one hundred percent take you up on that. I’m not the only one constantly looking over my shoulder for those bat things, right?”

“Bat things?” Erica raises an eyebrow.

They’re all talking in whispers. No one has to say a word about it—the reaction is automatic.

Robin takes a heaving breath. “If you didn’t see any, be grateful. The Upside Down is full of them.”

“Pity I wasn’t there,” says Erica, sounding almost disappointed. “After that meat thing? Psh. I could’ve helped you take ‘em.”

“Erica,” Nancy interrupts. “If there was ever a time and place to allow yourself to be grateful you missed something—it’s now.”

"Thank you, Miss Morals,” Erica mutters.

Nancy stops and looks at her. Doesn’t speak. Just looks. And then drops the gun.

“Look at me,” she says. “No, seriously. Look at me. You weren’t there when your brother and his friends first ran into these things. They were exactly your age, and I’ve seen just how screwed up it made them. The fact that you’re here at all after the last two years proves you’re strong enough to handle it, I’m not doubting that. But don’t try to bluster through this, not around me. We know each other too well for that.”

“I’m not blustering,” says Erica. “I’m not my brother. You don’t get to talk down to me just because you’re older and in a dozen relationships.”

“She’s not talking down to you,” says Robin. “Promise. She’s done that to me a bunch, I know how it goes.”

Nancy shoots her a withering glance.

“I can take it,” says Erica. “You think this is worse than the Purple People Monster? Shit’s gone down, shit’s gonna get worse, and for all the child endangerment y’all have put me through, I’d better be able to take it by now.”

Nancy sighs. “Fine. I’m here, alright? That’s all I’m saying.”

“The hell you mean? Of course you’re here. Dumbass.”

Robin gently places a hand on Nancy’s shoulder. “Just let this one go, maybe? We’ve been in scrapes together before. I think she’s okay.”

Nancy bites her lip. Nancy’s not okay. She can’t understand how Erica could be.

Her eyes meet the younger girl’s, though, and a familiar fire burns there. A fire, lit to burn away vulnerability, because she needs it to survive. Because if she doesn’t, she’ll collapse.

Nancy’s seen it in herself.

Nancy’s seen it in Mike.

“You’re a hell of a lot stronger than I was at your age,” Nancy mutters, reluctantly. “Maybe you’ll sleep like a baby tonight. I don’t know.”

“Oh, I will,” Erica responds. Her mask slips a little, though. “Don’t worry, Wheeler. I get you. But fact is, you all are lucky you’ve got me.”

Robin’s hand tightens on Nancy’s shoulder. Don’t push it. Not now.

"Yes,” is what Nancy settles on. “I’m glad we still do.”

Chapter Text

By the time Jonathan manages:

-To persuade Lucas to go home and leave Max for the night

-To reassure Eleven that Steve will be okay and they’ll get him out of jail

-To pick up the quiet boys at the trailer park

-To persuade Will to let the coroner take Eddie’s body

-To make the too long, too quiet drive to Maple Street

—he is exhausted, the kids are exhausted, and no one has the slightest idea what to say or do. Too much has happened, and all they want to do is collapse in a warm bed and forget that anything has happened. That anyone is hurt, that anyone is dead.

No one speaks as they drive. Instead, the Party hold hands in the back, like when they were twelve.

Dustin’s mother is waiting for him. She’s wringing her hands under the darkened porch light and makes it to the car before it’s even parked.

“Dusty,” she sobs, pulling him out the door and into her embrace.

“I’m alright, mom. It’s… I’m alright.” The relief on his face is palpable. One less worry.

"I tried to call everyone, but the phone isn’t working.” Claudia Henderson looks into the car, but asks no questions about the Byers’ appearance. “Thank you for bringing my boy home safe,” she says instead, voice filled with emotion. “Where were you, Dustin? What’s happened?”

“Let’s just go, mom,” he says, dully. “I’ll tell you inside. Tomorrow?” he says, looking back at his friends.

The Party nods. “Tomorrow.”

And he’s gone. Jonathan takes a deep breath, and drives onward.

Next in line is Lucas, who leaves the car with extreme reluctance. He’s been bandaged up, though he still looks terrible, and says nothing as he steps into his driveway.

“We will go see her in the morning,” El tells him, firmly. The others exchange glances and nod, worried, but Lucas won’t meet their eyes.

“Yeah,” he says. “I know.”

And then he’s gone, too.

“Don’t worry about that now, okay?” mumbles Jonathan. “Let’s just… let’s just get Mike home.”

He refuses to let him walk the twenty feet down the sidewalk to his own house, however. Call it a precaution.

Mike is antsy, though. A lawn separates him from his family. From home. From the illusion of safety. His heart aches, and he leaps out as soon as the car stops. They have to be okay. They have to.

He makes it about five feet before turning around, baffled to find himself alone. “What are you guys doing? Come on, let’s go.”

The Byers’ exchange glances. Mike gestures towards the door with his chin. “What are you waiting for?”

“We’ll find a motel,” says Jonathan. “Right now… we don’t want to impose.”

Will bites his lip, and El looks away.

Mike rolls his eyes. But he’s not the one who speaks.

“You absolute morons. You really think you’re going back out there? Like this?”

Jonathan’s eyes widen, and Mike jumps. Standing behind him is his sister.

Nancy crosses her arms, silhouetted by the dim light shining from the windows of the Wheeler house. By some miracle, Maple Street still has power.

“Nancy,” Mike and Jonathan say in the same breath.

"Morons,” she repeats. And then pulls her brother into a hug. “You’re never leaving home again, you hear me? Mom’s already about to explode with anxiety.”

Mike groans, but he’s smiling into her shoulder. “Ugh, Nancy. Don’t be a sap.”

The Byers, however, remain in the car. Nancy leaves her brother, reluctantly, and marches up to the driver’s side window.

She eyes her boyfriend.

"Just because I hid the gun from my mom doesn’t mean I don’t know where it is,” she says, warningly. “I will lead you inside at gunpoint if I have to.”

Jonathan is the first one to step out. “Nance… I… don’t be dense—”

“Shut up, Byers,” she says, and hugs him tight. “Just get inside.”

This time he complies, and his siblings follow.

Clearly, Nancy made it home long enough ago that her mom had had time to prepare for visitors: her hair is up, her clothes neat. Mrs. Wheeler is sweeping up post-earthquake debris in the kitchen when they arrive; Holly stands beside her, back against the wall, wide-eyed and scared. As the kids shuffle their way inside, Karen rushes forward to meet them in a veritable tornado of relief.

“Oh, you poor dears! Thank God you’re safe; I’ve been so worried...”

She becomes a flurry of movement and words and preparations, pulling cups and plates and silverware out of cupboards and sweeping shattered china off the floor. Jonathan tries to apologize for the intrusion while Will and El stand awkwardly behind Mike. (He’s almost tall enough for it to work.) Behind them, the clock on the wall ticks loudly, the steady beat a reminder of both the lateness of the night and the menace of a similar timepiece.

“Should’ve called ahead,” mumbles Ted, stumbling up from his La-Z-Boy to greet them. No one responds, but his guests take the remonstration to heart. They all feel remarkably out of place. Before Vecna, the Wheeler household had been a safe haven, but tonight, it is barely shelter from the dark.

“No,” says Karen, firmly. “You are always welcome in our house; you know that. Especially on a night like tonight. Come in, sit down; I can get you some water—sandwiches—anything you like. Whatever happened, whyever you’re here—that’s a tomorrow problem, okay? I’m just glad you’re safe.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Wheeler,” says Jonathan. “Don’t worry about food. Honestly, I think we all just need rest? We could sleep in the basement, or something, if that’s okay.”

“Of course,” Karen says immediately. “But don’t even think about the basement. We’ll tidy up the guest room for you. Will can stay with Michael—right, Michael?—and Jane with Nancy.”

Mike mutters something under his breath, embarrassed. He’s been berated and hugged and kissed and berated some more ever since he walked in the door, so he’s flustered as well as tired. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

He doesn’t notice the look Will gives Jonathan.

El and Nancy, meanwhile, exchange a glance of their own. They’ve never been close, exactly, but El has always admired her. Nancy tries for a reassuring smile. It doesn’t quite work, but the intent is sincere, and El smiles back.

Watching this, Karen purses her lips, and sighs at the tired crew now filling her kitchen. Where have they been? she wonders. She’s said she'll wait to ask... but with the way her kids always get mixed up in nonsense, she desperately wants to know now. Being out late in an earthquake certainly counts as nonsense to Karen. Not to mention the fact that everyone is somehow back from California.

Instead, she moves in for another hug, this time including Jonathan, Will, and El. “All of you, come here,” she says. “Everything’s going to be alright.”

It’s hard to believe that, but in Karen’s capable hands, the Byers kids start to relax—if only slightly.

In short order, they are all shepherded to their respective quarters. Jonathan follows Mrs. Wheeler towards the guest bedroom but looks pointedly at his brother before he leaves. “I’ll be there in five seconds if you need me, Will, okay? If anything goes wrong.” Jonathan doesn’t look at Mike, but Will understands the point.

“I’m fine, Jonathan,” he says quietly. His brother gives him another hug, and as much as Will is hurting, as much as he wants to be alone… he knows he isn’t alone. Not anymore. And that means something.

El makes to follow Nancy, but Mike grabs her hand.

Karen, ever insightful, catches it.

“No,” she calls from the guest bedroom door. “There might be a disaster on, but you’re still not sleeping with a girl in your room.”

“Mom!” yells Mike. “That’s not—ugh.”

From Jonathan’s arms, Will snorts. It’s the first positive noise he’s made all night, and both Mike and El can’t help but smile in response. Karen narrows her eyes and returns to the linens.

Mike turns back to El. “Ignore her, okay?” he says. “I just… we haven’t had a chance to talk. Since… since the fight. And, I wanted to say…”

He grits his teeth. It’s hard, but he’s going to do it.

“I meant what I said, you know. In the trailer. While you were in the tank.”

El’s eyes widen, and Jonathan’s arms tighten around his brother.

“I… I really can’t live without you, okay?” Mike is beet red, and he can’t quite meet El’s eyes, but he’s going to do this if it kills him. “I love you. I need you to know that. In case… in case anything else happens tonight. I need you to know how important you are to me.”

El grips his hand tightly. This should make her happy. She should be happy. But One’s face swims before her eyes, grimly satisfied, and her stomach turns.

“Thank you, Mike,” she says, softly. She is sure she doesn’t deserve it. “I love you, too.”

He pulls her in for a hug. (A lot of that going around tonight, El thinks.) Though she wraps her arms around him, the gesture is notably less confident than usual.

Mike tries not to think about that as he watches her walk away.

“You’re worried about her,” says Will dully, as Mike leads the way into his bedroom. A sleeping bag is already set up on the floor, but Will doesn’t move towards it. “You told her the truth, right? I’m sure she appreciates it; tonight was just… well. I’m proud of you, that’s all.”

And what does that mean for you, Will Byers? Will thinks ungraciously.

Shut up, he tells himself.

Mike makes no attempt to move, either, and stays quiet.

“I am,” Will insists. “It’ll be okay.”

For a moment, nothing happens. Then, before Will can react, Mike spins around and throws his arms around him. His grip is strong, almost suffocating.

Will stiffens. “Mike—hey, Mike, what…”

“No,” Mike says, almost in a whisper. “It’s not okay. It’s not okay. Nothing’s okay. You’re not okay. You shouldn’t be trying to comfort me… I-I’m sorry I didn’t do anything earlier. I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, too. I’m sorry all I can do around you is talk, about me, me, me…” His shoulders shake. “Shit. I should have been there. Especially tonight. Eddie…”

Will closes his eyes, and does not lean into the hug. No matter how desperately he wants to.

Not now, he thinks. He can’t do this now.

Keep saving all… those lost sheep… for me.

“Will, say something,” says Mike, desperately. “I’m serious. He—Vecna’s back, he’s here for you and El and he’s already gotten Max and Eddie and I just—I’m not okay, Will.” He takes a deep breath, and lets Will go. “Alright?” He sinks backwards onto his desk, spent. “I know I’m being a mess here, but you’re my best friend and I need you to know that I care about you, too. I’m just sorry.”

Will only watches him.

Mike never says he’s sorry.

“Yeah, well,” says Will. He doesn’t know what to say. “Thanks, Mike.” He tries to smile.

Mike squeezes his eyes shut and misses it. The familiar surroundings of his room, his bed, his lamp, his toys, even Will… they all seem out of place, alien. Mike strains. There have to be some words, somewhere, that he can use to make Will understand. There have to be.

But El had said “thank you”, too, and Mike gets the feeling that neither of them totally meant it.

"I should probably be with Jonathan tonight,” Will starts awkwardly. “Make sure he’s okay, and all…”

Fuck. Mike winces. He really has screwed everything up. He shifts, trying to think of something to say that will keep his best friend here, where Mike can keep an eye on him…

As he does, something shuffles out from under his hands and falls to the floor.

“Mike, you dropped something,” says Will.

Mike looks. At his feet is an envelope.

No, he realizes, bending down towards it. (It’s a relief, it’s a distraction, it’s something.) Three envelopes.

“I don’t…” He flips them over.

On the front of the first one is his name.

Mike.

And on the next:

Will.

And on the next:

Eleven.

Mike’s heart begins to pound.

“They’re letters,” he starts. “I don’t understand, who...”

Will comes close. Mike can feel their shoulders brush, can feel Will’s pain through the touch, the same way he felt El’s. Useless, he thinks. I’m useless.

Will takes his letter.

“Do you think it’s something… bad?” he asks. His voice wavers.

Mike tears his finger through the top of his envelope, guarded. “No idea. Why would stuff for you and El be here, anyway?” He slips the letter out, distracted, and skims it. “Huh, I…”

The words catch in his throat—“Wait”—and his eyes snap to the name signed at the bottom.

“Will,” he breathes.

From, says the letter. Then,

Love, (this one is scratched out vigorously), and then finally:

Sincerely—

Max.

“She… left them for us,” whispers Will, realizing. “Do you think she knew—?”

Mike has no idea, but he does know that he is terrified to read the contents.

Down the street and across town, in Lucas’s room and Dustin’s, each boy comes to a halt before their own envelopes. They know exactly what the letters mean.

Separated by the night, worn out and hurting and scared, the Party stands on a precipice. In front of them are Max’s final words. No one wants to read them, though, because if they are Max’s final words, that means she’s gone for real.

Lucas slides down onto the floor. There’s a knock on the door—Erica—and she joins him wordlessly.

Dustin sits at his desk and buries his head in his hands.

Mike and Will, silent, walk to Nancy’s room with El’s letter, and their own. The girls let them in, first with curiosity, then concern.

Scattered throughout a darkened Hawkins, the Party begins to read.

MARCH 28-29, 1986

The first time Katinka breaks down, they are over the Pacific Ocean.

Joyce buries her head in Hopper’s chest and mentally prepares to swim back to Alaska. Hopper shuts his eyes and decides he is going to kill Yuri before the Pacific does. Murray just yells.

“Do not worry, Americans!” Yuri screams over the wind. “Katinka is only feeling a little fussy!”

He slams a wrench into the controls repeatedly. They plummet for entirely too long before the engine sputters and returns to life. Slowly, slowly, the janky helicopter rises back to its previous height.

“Do not forget to tighten your seatbelts,” hollers Yuri. They do not have seatbelts. “We have once again reached our cruising altitude.”

“Yuri,” yells Hopper, through gritted teeth and over the noise of the blades, “I thought you had this thing under control.”

“Yes, yes,” Yuri yells back. “Do not worry! I keep my promises!”

He grins through his terrible teeth. No one is reassured.

The second time Katinka breaks down, they are somewhere over Northern Alaska.

It plays out more or less the same way, except this time the chopper does not regain its previous height. Yuri sings a little song in Russian while tapping a staccato beat on the dashboard, looking entirely unbothered, and Katinka’s skids brush the treetops with a series of unnerving screeches.

Joyce has to persuade Hop not to kill their pilot for about a full half hour. It’s difficult, because she’s not totally against the idea.

Eventually, though, they make it to Yuri’s Fish n' Fly. Against all odds.

As the three adults stumble out of the helicopter, feet uncertain on the cold American concrete, they sigh in relief. It’s an unwelcoming location, but it isn’t moving.  

It hits them suddenly that they are home.

Okay, not home, exactly, but not Russia.

Murray whips around, hands above his head.

“We did it,” he whispers. Then, louder, “We did it! Hoo hoo! I can’t believe it!”

“Neither can I,” mutters Hop through gritted teeth. “Yuri, you sonovabitch. I thought we agreed no meddling!”

It’s absolutely frigid. Everyone is covered in bruises and cuts, snow is falling, and it’s getting dark. Joyce notices that, despite the energy with which he rebukes Yuri, Hop clearly needs rest—as well as medical attention. So she isn’t quite as enthusiastic as the others about being in her home country; not yet. Their kids are still in danger—and if Hop doesn’t get that rest, so is he.

“Yes,” says Yuri happily, ignoring Hop’s remonstrations. “And I did not meddle! Can you imagine. Crazy Americans defeat a horrible monster and make it home alive. Truly, this was a wonderful experience.” He claps his hands together, and the smile vanishes. “Now get off of my tarmac. Yuri has crossed many lines this week and he will not do it again. Not even for forty thousand dollars.”

“Classic Soviet hospitality,” says Murray. “This guy.”

“Yuri may betray his country for the greater good,” Yuri continues. He’s grinning again, albeit in a rather less friendly fashion. “But he also remembers the knocks he takes along the way.” He motions to the bump on his head. “Good day to you. I hope we do not meet again.”

And they are alone in the fresh Alaska air.

“Lovely,” says Hop. “Think he’ll let us call a taxi?”

Yuri does, in fact, begrudgingly allow them to use his phone—if only after much cajoling. The taxi arrives, they travel to the airport, buy tickets to Chicago—the usual rigmarole. All of a sudden, Russia is behind them.

“This feels… so normal,” Joyce says to Hop, when they get a moment alone. They’ve each taken turns in the airport bathroom to clean up, just a bit, and such activities are currently taking up Murray’s full attention. “One day of flying… and we’re out.”

“You’re telling me.” Hop hasn’t stopped staring. Not just at Joyce—though he does plenty of that—but everything that reminds him of home. Vending machines. Tiled floors. English over the loudspeakers. Couples, hand in hand. Happy families. The gloriously excessive air of pure, unadulterated capitalism.

Hop’s never been the biggest believer in the system, as much as he’s relied on it. But right now? The system feels like heaven.

His arm is slung around Joyce’s shoulders, casual, easy. Joyce can tell it hurts him; somewhere underneath his jacket are claw marks. But she can’t bring herself to ask him to move, as much as a part of her thinks she should.

In Russia, where everything is wrong and strange, being intimate with Jim Hopper was only natural. Here? Here, Joyce is haunted by images of Lonnie, of Bob, of romances collapsed and failed and lost.  

Hop is nothing like Bob, and certainly nothing like Lonnie. He’s his own bizarre character. A part of Joyce is terrified that she’s making a mistake, as the guilt of Bob’s death lingers on her mind. But Hopper is here. He loves her. Even though Joyce knows shit is going to hit the fan as soon as they get back to Hawkins… she wants to make the most of that love while she still can. She just got him back, and she’s not going to lose another partner.

“How are you feeling?” she asks softly.

Hop raises an eyebrow, and his mouth quirks upwards in a vague smirk. “Like I just fought a Demogorgon and survived a flying death trap. How’re you?”

Joyce rolls her eyes. “You know what I mean, Hop.”

He sighs. It’s a happy noise, but the man still looks hollow. “Honestly? We might be back in the good old US of A. But I don’t think I’m gonna feel better until I see El’s stupid grinning face. Until I know she’s safe. It’s that whole PTSD thing, right? Nothing feels real, nothing feels settled; not yet. But that kid… she grounds me. Did in the gulag, does now.”

Joyce bites her lip and nods. “I understand. Will and Jonathan… they’ve always kept me sane, myself. We’ll get back to them. I promise.”

Hop nods back. Joyce’s mind wanders, though, still stuck on a nugget of guilt.

“I know that agent said Owens was only bringing El back to Hawkins—but I assume my boys are with her, too,” she says slowly. “They always are, somehow. I just… I don’t regret coming to get you, I really don’t. You’re not allowed to imply that, ever, but still—what if they needed me and I was gone? What if they needed us, and we took too long?”

Hop laughs, a harsh bark, and Joyce starts. “El did need me, and I was gone,” Hop says. “But you helped her. Will helped her. Jonathan helped her. She had a whole family at her side, and still does. Every time I worry about those kids, I remember the fact that, in all honesty, they need us a hell of a lot less than we need them. We can be as stubborn and ornery as we like… but they’re the ones who save the day.”

“How optimistic of you.”

“I’m not being optimistic, Joyce. I’m just right.”

“Clearly. You are stubborn and ornery. Maybe you’re right about the rest, too. Maybe.”

“Ouch. Stabbed by my own knife.”

It’s the first real banter, the first relaxed conversation they’ve had in who knows how long.

“You asked how I’m feeling, though,” says Hop gruffly. “I’m feeling like the other person who kept me alive in that madhouse is here in front of me, and in a few hours I’ll get to see my kid’s face again. I might be beat up and broken physically, Joyce. And I might be shit at feelings. But that? It makes me pretty damn happy. Despite it all.”

Joyce gives him a gentle smile, and rests her head on his shoulder. “Good,” she says. “Let’s finish saving our children, then. Plus—we’ve got a date to keep, don’t we?”

Hop leans his head back over the top of the chair, and grins.

The moment lingers—but not quite long enough, as Murray returns in a flurry of movement. Joyce and Hop do their best to untangle themselves—the man may have saved them time and time again, but he’s still Murray. Neither wants to provoke his uncannily accurate romantic advice right now.

That, however, is not the information Murray is here to dispense.

“Good god,” he says. “Sorry to interrupt, lovebirds. But have either of you bothered to check out a newspaper?”

“A newspaper?” Hop frowns. “No. The news is not exactly my favorite way to relax.”

“Sarcasm, very nice,” says Murray. “I’m going to choose to ignore that, largely because 'relaxing' might not be quite what you’re about to do.”

He brandishes the paper, shaking it in front of their faces. “Our little hamlet, it turns out, went and got itself famous while we were away.”

The headline reads, “Freak Earthquake in the Heartland.”

“What the hell?” mutters Hop. Murray pulls the paper back, and reads, dramatically:

“'Once a quiet backwater, Hawkins, Indiana has repeatedly made the news in recent years due to a string of unfortunate tragedies. This Thursday, March 27^th, the small town once again found itself reeling in the face of terror—this time due to what seismologists are calling ‘a natural disaster of near-unprecedented scale’.”

Murray waggles his eyebrows. “The monstrosities, perhaps?” he proposes. “It would appear we were correct there.”

The others ignore him, and Hop snatches the paper out of his friend’s hands.

“Jesus,” Hop mutters under his breath. “7.4? Power outages, fires, collapsed buildings… FEMA and the National Guard called in? What happened, kid?”

Joyce is focused on a very specific part of the article. “‘22 casualties have been confirmed, with dozens still missing,’” she quotes. She massages her forehead. “Please don’t be anyone we know. Please don’t be anyone we know.”

Hop grimaces. “We can only hope we’re that lucky.”

Joyce grimaces right back. “We are that lucky, Hop! We made it here alive. You said it yourself—Eleven is capable. Our kids are smart. They’ll be okay. They’re okay. They have to be.”

“I tried to call,” says Murray. “Because of course. Phone lines are down, though. Not exactly surprising, but unfortunate. If it will help you sleep on the plane, it could simply be a freak natural disaster.”

“You’re not that stupid,” Hop says flatly.

“No,” agrees Murray. “But we can pretend, if we so choose. It’s not like we can reach anyone from here. So what good is worrying?”

He doesn’t look happy, though.

Hop crumples up the newspaper and takes a deep breath. “Guess we just have to trust that I’m right and leave the safety of the world up to a couple teenagers. Again. What a responsible father I am.”

“It’s my favorite thing to do,” says Murray dryly. “You’re a wonderful father, Jim.”

Joyce nods but doesn’t respond. She’s thinking.

When the gates opened before—in the lab, in the mall—there’d been electromagnetic disturbances. But not earthquakes; not even when the gates had closed. This is something different, Joyce thinks, and she doesn’t like the implication.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, a new worry is growing. One she resists because she does trust her kids, but a worry nonetheless.

What would happen, Joyce thinks, if they didn’t win this time? What would that look like? If El couldn’t close a gate. If something came through. If, god forbid, anyone didn’t survive…

Joyce worries that it might look a little something like this.

She squeezes her eyes shut tight. In the background, Hop and Murray are anxiously checking the departures board, hoping against hope that their flight will be ready to leave three hours ahead of time. She tunes them out.

The world’s still around, she thinks. The Upside Down hasn’t started a war, as far as we can tell. No one is talking about monsters, or smoke demons, or other dimensions. The kids can’t have lost. They never have.

Joyce can’t help but remember, though, that this time Eleven didn’t have her powers.

The thought makes her sick enough that she could scream.

In the end, the flight is almost upsettingly uneventful. Joyce keeps waiting for the Mind Flayer to swoop out of the clouds and drag the plane down into the darkness, but it doesn’t happen. The only respite from worry she gets is the fact that Hopper spends the entire flight asleep.

There is, however, a woman waiting for them when they land in Chicago. Her clothes are neat but casual, completely at odds with the sharpness of her hair and face. She is holding a sign that simply says BYERS, in all caps, and stands by the gate, emotionless.

Hop sees her as soon as he steps off the plane. No time to relax, he thinks, and very carefully motions Joyce and Murray forward. He pulls them aside, out of the crowd of passengers, pretending to inspect something in their one carryon. The others follow, unquestioning.

“You see her,” Hop says.

“Yes, Jim, I have eyes,” says Murray. “Government. Clearly.”

“Government?” hisses Joyce. “How would they know we were here? Are we in danger?”

“The question isn’t how they knew,” insists Murray. “Of course they knew. There are spies everywhere, Joyce. The CIA is almost as good as the KGB. Not quite. But very close. No, the question is why.”

Hop leans over, checks the tag, and responds carefully. “The agent I talked to in Yuri’s hideout was a woman. Small consolation, yes, but it could be her. Or someone on her side.”

“That’s a leap,” says Murray. “It could also be someone working for our little shadow monster friend. Or those bad actors your connection mentioned. Regardless, we are taking too long here. We should confront her, but if any of you get a bad feeling, do not go with her to a secondary location.”

“I’m starting to remember why I used to hate you,” says Hop.

“Oh? Well, chief, do you see another option? If you feel like fighting off another government entity, be my guest, but please, Jim, do me a favor and leave me out of it.”

Joyce looks over her shoulder. The woman is still standing by a pillar, completely unfazed. She meets Joyce’s eyes, then flicks her own towards the men. Then back to Joyce. She nods, slowly.

“We can’t run,” Joyce says slowly. “She’s probably armed. And she knows we’ve seen her. Let’s just hear her out if we can, alright?”

The two men look at her.

“I’m tired,” Joyce says. “It’s not like I trust this woman any more than you do. But if there’s a chance that Owens’ men are in Hawkins, that they have control over the situation… our odds are better if we work with them than if we don’t.”

“Exactly,” says Hop. “Now let’s move, please. People are staring.”

“There’s one of her, and three of us,” says Murray. “And one of us is a black belt.”

“In a children’s dojo,” Joyce reminds him.

“And yet, somehow, we are still alive,” Murray says curtly.

“Move,” says Hop.

The woman watches them bicker as they approach.

“About time,” she says, once they reach her. “Your ride is waiting.”

“And you are?” says Hop, unimpressed.

“A friend.”

Murray snorts.

“A friend, huh,” says Hop. “Do you have any ID that might persuade me? A badge, or something.”

“Your daughter will be eager to speak with you,” the woman continues, ignoring him. “She won her game, you know. She’s waiting.”

Hop’s eyes widen imperceptibly.

“Can we at least know your name?” Joyce asks, wary.

The woman cocks her head. “Stinson. Pleasure to make your acquaintance, Ms. Byers, but time is of the essence. I am a friend; that you may believe. A friend of the doc’s. If you would just follow me—”

She turns and walks away, towards a sign that reads Baggage Claim.

The group exchanges glances. Rather, Murray and Joyce do, because Hop still is staring after Stinson.

"Thoughts?” Murray says, grinning bitterly. “Earth to Jim.”

“That’s… her,” Hop says slowly. “The agent on the phone.”

“What?” says Joyce. “How do you know?”

“Same words just now, when you asked for her name. ‘A friend of the doc’s.’ It’s her.”

“Could still be KGB or CIA,” says Murray.

“No,” says Hop. “She knows El. She didn’t look at me like I was a ghost. She says El won. If she has information—and she had information before—I’m going to get the rest of it.”

"I am once again putting my life in your hands, Jim,” says Murray. “So, for my sake, I hope you’re right.”

Hop looks at Joyce. She nods wordlessly.

And they follow Stinson down the concourse.

Chapter Text

MARCH 28, 1986

The day after the earthquake, people start leaving Hawkins.

The Party watches them go as Jonathan drives down the highway towards the hospital. His lane is nearly empty. The other is full to the brim with people fleeing, towards Indianapolis. Chicago. Cincinnati. A line of station wagons and trucks and sedans finally good and tired of Hawkins, leaving their town for the last time.

The kids can’t blame them. Not really. But they know, now, that no amount of running will save anyone from what’s coming.

There are some vehicles entering Hawkins, too. But these are not civilian cars. No, trundling along, often trailing Jonathan’s little jalopy with some impatience, are the green hulks of Army jeeps, filled with National Guardsmen on a mission. Supposedly FEMA is out there somewhere, too, but for all the kids can see, it feels like the whole US army has just invaded their little town. Every time one passes by, El, even squished between Mike and Will, shrinks down a little further into her seat. Just in case.

Through it all, the radio squawks out instructions, repeating the same lines over and over. It’s been doing so since the wee hours of the morning; telephone and cable lines are out, so it’s the only way to reach the general population. Jonathan in particular has been listening to the broadcast since their very rushed breakfast, hoping for new information, and his attachment to the tedious noise has continued even into the Party’s travel time.

Anywhere within 500 feet of a rift—that’s the official word, as if it makes them any less suspicious—is to be immediately placed under quarantine, and must be evacuated, the announcer says in his droning monotone. Authorities have explained that the earthquake triggered an underground coal seam fire. The burning rifts, highlighting undiscovered ore veins from Hawkins’ mining days, may emit toxic gases and cause nearby areas to be unsafe for habitation. Citizens within evacuation zones should make their way to the emergency shelters set up at the Hawkins Middle and High School complex, or those at Hawkins Presbyterian, whichever is nearest.

Mike snorts as the announcer begins his spiel again. “An underground fire? I still can’t believe that’s what they went with.”

“It’s not that strange,” says Dustin. “Did you ever hear about that town in Pennsylvania? Center-something. Mine fire, too. There’s precedent.”

“Come on, man,” whines Mike. “That’s Pennsylvania. This is Indiana. For all these chuckleheads know, this was just an earthquake. Why would it cause a fire? It makes no sense!”

“An earthquake creates pressure, dumbass. And pressure creates heat—remember Mr. Clarke’s class? Simple physics, dude. If something can ignite, it will. And Hawkins was a mining town. It makes sense.”

“Yeah, to morons. We didn’t mine coal.”

“Are you guys really arguing the logic of a government coverup?” says Nancy, from the front seat. “It was always going to be ridiculous. It was for Barb, it was for the mall; no surprise they’d go this route again. There’s no point in thinking about it very hard.”

“They are coping,” El says quietly. They’re the first words she’s said today, and everyone jumps. “Joyce says that everyone has different ways of processing grief.”

“Exactly! Thank you, El. Plus, the situation does raise some fascinating ideological concerns—” Dustin tries, but Mike punches him lightly in the shoulder and he shuts up.

Will looks around at his friends and wishes he could join in—coping or not. Instead, against his will, his mind replays Eddie’s final words, Mike’s speech to El in the trailer, Mike’s speech to him in the Wheeler house, and Jonathan’s words of support. There’s no room in his head for anything else. Honestly, all Will wants to do is go back to sleep and pretend that the back of his neck isn’t starting to prickle.

Different ways of coping, Will thinks.

The Party is trying, with varying degrees of success, to absorb their new reality. As subdued as they are, no one can ignore the fact that the secrets they’ve kept hidden for so long are swiftly and effectively becoming the new normal.

To the rest of Hawkins, Vecna’s invasion was officially just an earthquake. A coal seam fire. The lie has been told, and people will buy it, even if they don’t like it.

If there are strange, fleshy growths reaching out of the burning rifts… it probably means nothing.

If there’s no sign of fire, well, it’s underground, right?

And if there seems to be a suspicious number of men in black suits stationed around town, who’s gonna question it?

The government knows best, after all.

Will shudders.

Though physically undamaged by the earthquake, the hospital building looks tired. And no wonder: it’s been working overtime at max capacity, busier now, if anything, than it was the night before. The number of empty cars in the parking lot is overwhelming, and the line for service stretches out the door.

Nancy takes point, explaining somewhat clumsily to the attendant by the door that they’re only here to visit.

The kids wait behind her, nervously expecting to be turned away. The folks in line, most lightly injured, seem peeved at being skipped, but the attendant looks relieved to have the distraction.

“You might be the only people in town who don’t need a bed,” she says, exhausted. “We’ve been sending cars out to other county hospitals for hours already. Just stay out of the way of anyone who looks important, alright?”

There is a chorus of protests from the prospective patients.

“They’re just visiting a relative!” the attendant yells. “Please, we will admit you and evaluate your needs as quickly as possible. If anyone is here for a similar reason to these kids, like I’ve said: please speak with me one at a time--”

Said kids rush inside as fast as they can before she can change her mind. They make sure to keep a wary eye out for the receptionist, expecting the usual yelled warnings about the visitor limit. But the reception desk is empty. With no working phones to use, it has been turned into an impromptu medical station, with first aid equipment scattered across it.

That’s the change that really hits the kids, their flesh bursting into goosebumps at the sudden emptiness.

“They should not have let us in,” Jonathan mutters as he shepherds their little group along. “It’s irresponsible. We’re not that important.”

“Do not question the logic of stressed-out employees,” says Dustin. “Especially when it’s in your favor. Nicely done, by the way.”

"Thank you, Dustin,” says Nancy. “Come on, Jonathan. I don’t want to linger here.”

Jonathan mutters something under his breath and follows her.

It takes some searching, but they find Max’s room in the end. Ms. Hargrove is sitting in the hall outside the door, back against the wall, face blank. There is a bottle on the floor next to her. She starts when she sees them but doesn’t get up.

Nancy and Jonathan exchange glances.

“Good morning,” Jonathan says hesitantly, and Ms. Hargrove snorts in response. “Is… how is she?”

The older woman rolls her eyes. “See for yourself. I didn’t leave her with a murderer this time.”

Jonathan bites his lip, uncertain how to respond. Ms. Hargrove doesn’t move to stop him, though, when he goes to open the door.

Lucas and Erica are already inside. The former is sitting on the edge of Max’s bed, a copy of the Neverending Story in his hands. (Dustin narrows his eyes momentarily, half expecting it to be a joke.) Lucas is reading aloud, but stops as soon as the rest of his Party peek their heads around the doorframe.

Jonathan and Nancy step aside, and let the kids rush past them.

“Hey,” says Lucas, voice slipping from vibrant narration to a dull monotone. “You made it.”

"I’m sorry we couldn’t get here sooner; Mike was asleep,” Dustin explains. “But yeah. At long last.”

Mike groans. “Come on, man. We had a night.”

“Doesn’t matter,” says Lucas. “It’s not like anything’s changed.”

Mike winces and joins the others in circling around their friend’s bedside. He regrets it almost immediately, as Max comes into view.

Beside him, Will flinches back. El buries her face in his shoulder, and Mike himself has to swallow down a sudden rush of nausea. He reaches out to steady himself, which ends up pulling El towards him, and the three teens lean together in an awkward mess. Dustin just stares.

For a moment they all stand, watching, as if their arrival might mean change. Might mean salvation.

Of course, it doesn’t.

Max’s face is pale and nearly bloodless; her eyelids sunken over damaged corneas. Her neck is held steady by a large brace, and each of her limbs are in traction, wrapped in bandages and casts. An IV is inserted in her right arm, and nasogastric tubes similarly protrude from her nose. The same thought echoes through the Party’s minds:

Max looks like a corpse.

“We’ve been reading,” says Erica, unfazed by her friends’ reactions. “Or at least he has. I’ve been doing the crossword.” She gestures down at the paper in her hands, and the squares are tellingly blank. “Not much else to do but wait.”

If only I could, thinks El. She takes a deep breath and forces herself to step away from her brother and boyfriend. The sudden lack of support is unsettling, and she wishes desperately that she could collapse back into them. Instead, she carefully approaches Lucas, prepared in the light of a new day for rejection and rage at her failure.

She doesn’t get it. Lucas’ bottom lip shakes as El steps forward, and he throws his arms around her with a sob.

“Thank you for coming,” he says, and the implicit forgiveness makes her shoulders sag in relief. “All of you.”

“Always,” whispers El.

“Of course,” say Will and Dustin.

“She’s our friend too,” adds Mike. The others stare at him, a little surprised by the admission. “What?” says Mike. “Don’t look at me like that.”

“Did… did you get her letters?” asks Lucas hesitantly. It’s not a subject he wants to discuss, but he needs to let his mind go somewhere. Slipping out of El’s grasp, he shifts towards Max and slides his hand gently into hers.

The Party nods, but no one moves to detail the contents.

“She wanted a part of her to live on,” he continues softly. “Guess that’s our job now.”

El squeezes her eyes shut, willing herself not to cry. “But that isn’t necessary. Max is alive. She will live on. She will.”

Lucas runs a hand through his hair, and says nothing.

El decides to risk hope anyway. “Do they know when she will wake?”

For a moment, Lucas doesn’t answer.  “No,” he says, finally. “They say she might not.”

His eyes sweep across the Party, gaze dark and painful. “Her heart stopped for over a minute. She died,” he emphasizes. “I mean, clinically. It wasn’t just… I don’t know what it was. She was gone. But then she came back. The doctors don’t know how. They say…” He stares directly at El. “They say it’s a miracle.”

Mike and Dustin exchange glances.  

“A miracle,” says El. “Yes.”

She doesn’t elaborate, nor does she acknowledge the sudden tension.

“You got magic eyes, right, Supergirl?” says Erica from the corner. She’s been watching the proceedings with tired acceptance, though she fails to catch the implication. “Max’s mind is gone. Maybe you can find it.”

El nods. “That’s why I am here.”

“Wait, what?” says Mike. “I mean, yeah, maybe, but you’re still recovering—”

“I can do it, Mike.”

“No! El, come on, you barely got up this morning. Are you serious?”

“Mike,” Will says pointedly. The other boy’s face changes to an unreadable expression, and it hits them all at once how many times they’ve had this same conversation. Will attempts to continue. “We don’t know how much time we have to find her. Maybe there’s a limit, and if we pass it, Max will get worse.”

“How could she get worse?!” Mike sputters indignantly.

Lucas ignores them all. “Please, El. You have to try.” His eyes are wide and exhausted.

El takes a very deep breath. He’s right. She has to.

“I can do it,” she repeats.

Lucas stands in acquiescence, and lets El take his place by Max’s bedside.

Mike doesn’t move to stop her.

El takes another deep breath, trying to center her racing mind, and slips her hand into Max’s. The air conditioning hums softly, and her friends stand behind her, trying (and failing) to keep their breathing quiet. It’s almost funny.

She remembers, again, Max leaning forward on her bed all those months ago, anxiously and happily waiting for information. For her, El thinks. I can do this for her. I have to.

"I’m here, Max,” she says, as gently as she can.

Then El closes her eyes, and lets the darkness take her.

The soft noises of the hospital wink out as ink spreads across El’s vision. It wavers and solidifies, and with it, the world becomes truly silent.

She is standing on a glassy mirror. The watery earth of the Void.

The ripples beneath and around her feet beat in miniature waves, and she glows as if in a spotlight that touches nothing else.

Whenever El is here, she feels like a ghost. Like she is walking the halls of a palace she cannot see and does not understand, something massive and chthonic and oppressive despite its size. A place between places. A place between minds. Empty in a way that watches.

She is alone.

“Max?” El calls out softly. Then, more confident: “Max?!”

Her voice acts as it always does in this netherworld: echoing, but not as far as it should. The vibrations come back to her; they wrap her in her own words, reverberate in her ears, and fail to penetrate the darkness.

“Max!!” El calls again, with increasing desperation. She calls up everything she knows of Max; the way she laughs, the way she smiles, the way her hair smells after a rainy day. In any other case, these would be paper trails. Doorways into another mind. Even with Billy, his mind intentionally guarded by One, there were ways in. Ways to slide around barriers and slip into the past.

Here, there is nothing.

It is as if, as El wields memories like candles in the night, the darkness draws in closer yet and blows them out. The echoes of El’s voice and of what remains of Max’s mind fade in tandem, and despite the rushing in El’s ears… there is nothing.

She is alone.

She is alone.

El is back in the hospital room.

The Party watches her expectantly. El tries to close her eyes again, to pretend. But the buzzing of the air conditioner, the breathing of her friends, the steady drip of blood from her nose… it all locks her firmly in place.

“Did—” Mike starts. But El shakes her head, cutting him off. She takes another breath, and the stale air of the hospital is almost suffocating.

“She… I couldn’t find her. It is like she has vanished.” El stifles a sob, then another, and another, until Mike is pulling her into him and she is weeping as softly as she can, as though her own quiet would let Max sleep a sleep without dreaming.

Dustin and Will both look down in opposite directions. Nancy rests her forehead on Jonathan’s shoulder. Erica sighs, but for once, it’s not judgmental.

Lucas just folds in on himself. There’s nothing left to say.

Eventually, he is left by himself. Erica is there, so not completely. But Lucas figures he might as well be.

The rest of the Party hadn’t wanted to leave, but there wasn’t much they could do. El tried twice more to find a way into Max’s head, with zero success. Each failure left her more and more visibly depressed, and the rest of them more and more visibly antsy.

There’s only so much pain you can take, Lucas thinks bitterly.

So, after a short, whispered conversation with Ms. Hargrove out in the hall, Jonathan and Nancy ushered Lucas’s friends away. El had left with her arms slung around Mike and Will’s shoulders, and Lucas couldn’t tell if it was for emotional or physical support.

He feels a gnawing sense of loss as the door closes behind them, alongside a surge of anger.

Don’t go, he wants to say. Don’t leave. How is it so easy for you?

But even Lucas, as he picks up The Neverending Story to continue from where he had left off, is overwhelmed by the insistent sense of inertia. The sense that nothing is going to work.

If El can’t find her, she’s gone.

She’s as good as dead.

What’s the point?

Lucas grips the novel so hard that his fingernails start to dig into the cover. It’s a library book, but he doesn’t care.

If I let her go, that means Vecna wins, he reminds himself. I will never let that happen. It’s only been a day.

It’s only been a day.

Erica tries to catch his eyes, but he ignores her.

And in the end, even this moment slips away far too quickly. Soon enough it’s evening, and his mom is here to pick him up, and he and Erica are leaving Max behind, and getting into their small sedan and making their way across a smoking Hawkins towards Maple Street.

Lucas falls into a daze. In his mind, he’s still in the hospital. He’s still staring into Max’s closed and hollow eyes, and her lips, almost blue, whisper the words, I don’t want to die.

I’m sorry Max, he thinks, as army vehicles and ambulances and escapees drift by through the window. I’m so sorry I can’t do more.

He’s afraid of leaving her. But even more than that, he’s afraid of going back, and his presence changing nothing.

The road skips by, and Lucas wants nothing more than to sink into it.

The cops are waiting for them when Mrs. Sinclair pulls into the driveway. The shock forces Lucas, unwillingly, out of memory, and into the less-than-comforting vise of reality.

“What on earth—” his mother murmurs. But an officer is already stalking towards the car.

Not just any officer.

Chief Powell.

He knocks on the window, and Mrs. Sinclair rolls it down with no small amount of reluctance.

“Hello, Chief,” she says warily. “Is something the matter?”

He looks tired. “Mrs. Sinclair. I’m so sorry to bother you. We were wondering if we could talk to your kids.”

Chief Powell spares a glance at the backseat. Lucas barely acknowledges him, and Erica braces herself.

Their mom sighs. “It’s been a long day, Chief. Surely this can wait until tomorrow? They haven’t done anything wrong, and you know it.”

"No one thinks they have,” says Powell. “However, by all accounts, they’re the only witnesses to the attempted murder of Maxine Mayfield.”

Lucas flinches, and Erica lets out a poorly suppressed gasp.

“The case against the Harrington boy seems pretty airtight,” Powell continues. “You know it, I know it. But quite frankly, we owe it to the victims to collect all the testimonies we can get our hands on. Lord knows we’ve all got plenty of other things to deal with, so the sooner my department can come to some sort of conclusion that satisfies the grieving families, the sooner we can shift our full attention to rebuilding our town.”

“Steve didn’t hurt her,” Lucas says, unbidden.

Erica narrows her eyes at him. “We shouldn’t say anything without a lawyer present. We’ve got rights, you know.”

“I don’t care,” says Lucas. “Steve didn’t do shit.”

Chief Powell sighs. “Ma’am?”

“Fine,” says Mrs. Sinclair. “But they’ve just spent all day at that Mayfield girl’s bedside. Don’t you dare make things worse.” And she fixes the Chief with a look that could freeze fire.  

Lucas sits in his living room in a rough chair usually meant only for decoration. Chief Powell and an assisting officer—Calla-something, Lucas recalls vaguely—face him grimly from the couch. They’ve determined the most effective method of discussion (interrogation, Lucas thinks) is to talk to each sibling alone. To his vague relief, Lucas's mother stands intentionally in the entryway, poised to intervene if necessary. He hopes it won’t be.

The Chief’s eyes bore into him, and Lucas shifts, uncomfortably.

He has to come up with a story that will make sense. Something that Erica can work with even if he can’t prompt her. He has no idea how to frame things, though. Not at first.

They run through the usual obnoxious pleasantries, and still nothing comes to mind. Mike’s the one who’s good at bullshit, Lucas thinks, trying to suppress panic. Why couldn’t they be interrogating Mike?

Then the assisting officer says something that makes Lucas reevaluate his entire strategy.

“Harrington is currently being held responsible for four murders, kid. Officer Cray said you were pretty insistent last night that he’s innocent. So if you’ve got testimony—I can’t promise it’ll do anything, mind you—but if you’ve got something to say, you should say it.”

It’s that phrasing—four murders—that catches Lucas’s ear.

“Four?” he asks. “No, only three people have died. Max is still alive, come on.” The anger comes back in a rush. How could the cops be so casual about this that they miscounted?

Powell looks at him quizzically. “Son, you were there for the fourth murder, right? Whatever happened in the old Creel House? Don’t think we’ve forgotten that, by the way, we will need an explanation. Still—the Carver boy.”

Lucas’s stomach drops. And now the anger is fury. He should think this through, he should forgive, he should be good and kind and better than he is sure he is…

But he remembers the feeling of Jason’s hands around his neck, and snaps.

“Jason wasn’t murdered,” he says coldly. “Jason tried to murder me.”

Chief Powell and—Callahan, that was his name—exchange a glance.

“Son,” the Chief says cautiously. “Jason was grieving. You were with the man who killed his girlfriend. If he did anything untoward, he was probably just—”

And suddenly, Lucas has a plan. It’s not great, and it would probably be best to be more careful, but Lucas is past that point. “Are you kidding? Attempted homicide is totally legal, then, if you’ve got an excuse? Steve wasn’t even there when Jason attacked us,” he bursts out. “I called Steve on my walkie. After. Max and I… we…” This part is hard, but rage burns in Lucas’s veins and keeps him talking. “We like exploring abandoned places, okay? For, like. Dates.” He tries not to blush, both at the lie and the shame of having lost Max, even before Vecna. “Erica agreed to be lookout. That’s all. But Jason found us, and since we’re friends with Steve, he…”

Lucas lifts up the collar of his shirt. Points at the bruises around his neck. Officer Callahan flinches.

“It’s funny,” says Lucas. He’s not laughing. “Sure, Steve was there when everyone died; except for that boy at the trailer park, and no one cares about that fact, huh? But you know who else was connected to everybody? Jason. It was his girlfriend who died first—after she hung out with another guy. Then came the school snitch, always first to nab a story, who was pretty damn eager for the Tigers to lose the big game. Then one of Jason’s—one of my friends. Patrick. Who was, I don’t know. Having doubts about Steve? Suspected something? I don’t know. But then Jason came for me, and I definitely thought something weird was going on. He tried to kill me, and tried to kill my girlfriend, just to make that suspicion go away. Ask Max when she wakes up. If she wakes up,” Lucas says bitterly. “She’ll tell you. No one ever thought to question Jason, though, did they? Just bought his story, hook, line, and sinker. Who cares that Steve was this town’s number one for years? The moment he falls from grace you all turn on him like a pack of fucking wolves.”

“Lucas Sinclair. Language,” his mother says sharply. She gestures at the Chief with her chin.

“Sorry, Chief,” mutters Lucas. “Still. Your actual murderer got caught in the earthquake. You found his body, right? He… fell in the rift. He’s dead now. Justice is served; Steve is innocent. You should let him go. What else do you want me to say?”

The two cops exchange another glance.

“You don’t have to say anything else,” says Callahan. “That’s the thing—we don’t have to ask Max to verify your story. She already gave her statement.”

Lucas’s head shoots up. “What?”

Chief Powell is holding an envelope. He waves it vaguely, and in an instant Lucas puts two and two together.

“We found this in the Mayfield trailer. It was addressed to Harrington. Ms. Hargrove had no idea where it came from, so she read it, and contacted us from the hospital as soon as she could get over there. It’s in her daughter’s handwriting, alright. Looks like she wrote a bunch of these before the… accident. To family and friends. Like she was afraid she’d be a target.” Chief Powell raises an eyebrow. “Now—this a situation you know anything about?”

Lucas’s stomach lurches. It’s dangerous territory. He can’t mention anything Upside-Down related, not even in passing. If he sounds even the slightest bit crazy…

But what if Max already did?

“Yeah,” Lucas starts carefully. “Yeah, I know about the letters. Of course she was afraid. We all were. But…” Lucas hesitates, then commits, and hopes Max won’t hate him for it. “Max was struggling. She lost her brother in the mall fire. I don’t know if you know that. Probably don’t. She… she blamed herself. So she wasn’t doing great anyway when, when all this started.”

It’s only half true, but Lucas chokes on the image of Max’s slow collapse, withdrawn, empty, hurt. He forces himself to continue. “Max saw Steve running away after Chrissy died, so she figured she might be a target, too, as the only eyewitness. We snooped around, tried to figure out who was killing the other kids—who might come after her. We started to suspect Jason, and then he suspected us, and Max… well, she was already hurting, and everyone was on his side, and…”

Lucas takes a deep breath. This is the biggest lie. It has to be a lie, because he’d probably lose his mind if he even considered the alternative. “She kind of… gave up… on escaping. On surviving. Max wrote those letters as a goodbye. She… she was pretty certain that if we confronted Jason, it would be.”

And now Lucas is crying again. He thinks, bitterly, that his actual suffering is a pretty good mask for this mess of a web he’s trying to spin.

Mrs. Sinclair slips into the room while he’s talking and, surreptitiously, rests her hand on his shoulder. She stays outwardly collected, but the gentle touch sends a jolt of strength through her son’s body. The cops watch her, but don’t move, clearly trying to absorb Lucas’s words.

Chief Powell takes a moment to collect himself, then says, “Well. I see. You’ll be happy to know that Max’s letter to Steve corroborates, at the very least, the faith you say she had in him. And your suspicions about Jason.” Powell meets Lucas’s eyes. “I have to say this, legally, so I’m sorry, but I need you to understand that lying to the police is a crime. I want to believe you. It would certainly be an easy out, for Jason to have been the perpetrator. But I also understand that it’s hard to believe that a friend could do something bad. Maybe Max misjudged Steve—maybe you did too. Good people can make mistakes. Are you sure that this story is the truth?”

“Max didn’t misjudge anyone,” says Lucas, gritting his teeth. “She’s probably the best judge of character I’ve ever met. And I’m not lying.”

The Chief thinks for a minute. Lucas’s stomach flips, and he tries to suppress a bout of nausea. Then Powell nods.

“I believe you, son. Did… did she happen to write you one of these letters?”

That Lucas wasn’t expecting. Powell raises an eyebrow, and the boy has no choice but to nod.

"Do you mind if we take a look at it?”

Lucas whispers something under his breath.

“Speak up for the Chief, Lucas,” says Mrs. Sinclair.

“…I haven’t read it yet.” His voice is low. What if Max said something about Vecna that would give the whole game away? And worse yet: if this letter is as personal as he suspects, how could he let anyone else read it before him?

“It could be important proof, son,” the Chief says quietly.

Lucas squeezes his eyes shut. “Fine. Fine. Just… don’t tell me what it says, okay? If you have to confiscate it. I don’t want to know, I don’t want her to be—” He whips the letter out of his back pocket, folded neatly, and hands it over, hand shaking. “Just take it.”

The Chief’s eyes soften, and he accepts the letter gently. “Don’t worry, son. We’ll bring it back to you. Whether Steve or Jason did this… they can’t hurt anyone now. Your girl is in good hands, alright? She’s safe. You’re safe. You’re a strong kid, and things are going to get better. I promise.” He pats Lucas on the shoulder. “Thank you for your time. I know how hard this must be for you, and we appreciate your cooperation.”

No, thinks Lucas, as the cops shake his mom’s hand and ask for Erica. You have no idea. Things are going to get better? No way in hell.  

Erica scans Lucas gently as they pass each other in the hall. There’s no time or cover to share the plan, so Lucas tries to encode his return gaze with as much information as he can muster.

“You okay?” his sister asks, voice uncharacteristically soft.

“Just trust in Max,” says Lucas. “You know who really hurt us.” Erica raises an eyebrow but doesn’t question it: Officer Callahan is very obviously standing in the doorway.

It’s down to Erica’s ability to interpret him, now. And her improv skills. All Lucas can do is hope.

“Do you know if the phone lines are working again?”

Will is standing in the Wheeler’s kitchen. The sun sets through the window, bright red through the haze, and Karen Wheeler stands at the sink, chopping vegetables.

She looks out the window and frowns. “I don’t think so. I tried to call Mike’s nana a few hours ago to let her know we’re alright. Just got the dial tone.”

“Oh.”

Karen turns towards the boy in front of her, his shoulders slumped, still wearing yesterday’s clothes. Her heart breaks at the sight. It’s been a long time since Will’s looked happy in her house, and she wishes that could change. But, she reflects, that one’s probably up to Mike.

“Trying to call your mom?” she says sympathetically.

“She’s on a business trip. She has no idea we’re here. You… you know how she is. She’ll worry.”

Karen does, in fact, know how Joyce Byers is.

“It’ll be alright, Will,” she says kindly. “People are working at top speed to get lines of communication open. You’ll be able to reach her by next week, I’m certain of it.”

Will looks up, and in the light from the window his hazel eyes glow with an indescribable hurt. Karen isn’t sure what spurs the thought, but in that moment it looks like more than just worry for his mother’s feelings.

"No, you don’t understand. She needs to know now. We can’t wait a week, or two weeks, or however long it takes. And-and I’ve got…” He trails off. “Never mind. Do you have any stationery?”

Karen raises her eyebrows. “Yes, of course. That might not be any faster, though, I’m afraid.”

“It’s better than nothing. I’ve gotta try.”

Karen bites her lip. “Will… I’ll get you the stationery. Of course. But you know you can talk to me, right? I’m not your mom, I know that. Still, you’ve grown up in this house, with my kids, and you belong here just the same.” She rests her hands on his shoulders. Will begins to flinch away, and Karen feels even worse. “If you need anything—to talk, to process, anything—I’m here, alright? I just want you to know that.”

Will nods, and Karen doesn’t think he took in a single word.

“…thanks, Mrs. Wheeler,” he says.

She smiles weakly. “Always, Will.” She hugs him gently. “Go check the desk in the basement. That’s where Mike always wrote his letters; there should be some leftover paper for you to use.”

Will pulls away, goes to the basement door silently, and descends.

Karen watches him go, wishing she could pull him back, shake the hurt out of him. Shake it out of all of the kids now filling her house. I’ve got to get the full story from Nancy soon, she reflects. The rushed excuses from this morning as everyone flew out the door… they were hardly enough. Something else is going on.

Will really, really, wishes Karen Wheeler wouldn’t try so hard. She makes it so damn difficult to fall into himself and drown.

He sits down roughly at the table in the corner and tries not to think about Mike sitting here for the same reasons. Tries not to think about this basement at all; especially not Will’s old scattered art on the walls.

Mike is in his room, so he can’t hover, at least.

El is with Mike. Of course. Probably doing who knows what. Will doesn’t want to think about it.

Nancy had vanished the minute they’d entered the house.

And Jonathan is in the guest room, listening to the radio. He’d told Will to come join him, clearly to talk, and Will wants to do that, more than anything… but he had something to do first.

That being, asking Mrs. Wheeler about the telephone.

All she had to do, Will thinks irritably, is say no, phone’s not working, here’s some paper. That’s it. But no, she’s gotta try to be nice.

She means well, the kind part of him admonishes.

She always means well! the irritated part of him responds. And still, she just stands there in the background, saying nice things but doing nothing at all and now she’s trying that with me and it’s weird and I don’t know what to do about it.

Will is being mean. He knows that. But his neck is tingling, he feels sick, and he hates being coddled. More than that, he hates being on the receiving end of the weak attempts at affection Mike has bemoaned since he was eight.

Ugh.

Will can’t think about Mrs. Wheeler right now, though. Or her son. No, Will’s got a job to do.

Seeing Max… it had reminded him of another loss. That he’s got a responsibility now, this time to the Hellfire Club.

If anyone can do it, it’d be you.

They’re still in California. In Lenora Hills, innocent and goofy as always, he’s sure, completely unaware that their leader, their friend, their anchor is gone. Gone for good, dead, in a strange state, in a strange town, thanks to entities beyond their ken.

No one else can tell them. It has to be Will. He has to do it. He has to find the right words, he has to be kind, and sweet, and understanding. But instead of rushing into it, getting everything over with, now he has to wait. Wait for the phone lines to get back up, wait for a letter to arrive, wait for a response that will inevitably tear him apart.  

His hand shakes. Mom first, he decides. She needs to know what’s going on, too.

(Sorry, Mrs. Wheeler, he thinks. I guess I can’t blame you. It’s not like I know what to say any more than you do.)

Dear Mom, Will writes.

We’re okay, so please don’t worry. I want to make sure you know that first.

El had her own… business trip… to go on with Dr. Owens. We followed her and ended up back in Hawkins, so that’s why we’re gone. I’m sure you’ve read about the earthquake. It’s exactly what you think it is, but we’re all alive, and El is back to normal, so everything will be okay.

Will tries not to let the tears win. They burn behind his eyes, and he blinks viciously. Sure, he thinks, letting out a shaky laugh. Everything will be okay. And “we’re all alive?”. That’s not true, either.

All he can do these days is lie.

Jonathan and El and I are staying at the Wheeler’s. They’re nice as always and try real hard to make us feel at home. Mrs. Wheeler was crazy mad at Mike for not calling to say he was coming back, though. She hates road trips.

I know you probably want to call right away, but don’t bother. Phones aren’t working; the earthquake knocked them out. With any luck you’ll get here before a letter will.

Hurry back.

Will crosses the words out vigorously. He doesn’t want to worry her. That’s the point. He’s gotta remember that, but lord, it’s hard. So Will wraps the letter up as quickly as possible.

We miss you. I hope your trip went well.

Love, Will.

Will chews on the inside of his cheek. Reads it over. It sounds… not great. He doesn’t know how much to say, especially since the feds will probably read it over somehow. He just wants to hold his mom, and be told that things will be alright, and cry like he’s a kid again. As much as he hates being weak, Joyce has always been there when things get hard. And right now things are very hard, so Will indulges the feeling, just for a minute. Tries to feel like he isn’t alone with Mike’s basement behind him. A basement filled with memories—mostly happy ones. He can hold on to that, except…

The air is cold and dry, and the memories crinkle at the edges.

“Will? Are you alright?”

El is standing on the bottom stair holding a small pile of clothes. She’s wearing what looks like one of Mike’s hoodies. Will jumps—he hadn’t heard her come down.

“O-oh, hey, El. Yeah. Yeah, I’m… I’m okay.”

She raises an eyebrow.

“Okay, no, I’m not okay,” he admits. “I’m just… I’ve got letters to write. Gotta let mom know we’re fine. And… I’ve gotta tell Hellfire about Eddie.” Will gulps.

“Oh,” says El, softly. “That is probably smart.” She walks over to join him by the desk and gives Will the pile in her hands. “Mike told me to give you these. They’re some of his clothes. He says that we ‘stink, and should probably wear something different so we don’t look like sweaty cartoon characters for the end of the world.’”

El’s Mike impression is comical enough that it actually pulls a laugh out of Will. “No way he said that. He said you stink? Is he high?”

El allows herself a soft chuckle. “I think he was trying to be kind.”

“Ugh. Mike’s an idiot. You don’t tell your girlfriend she stinks.”

“Mike is an idiot,” El says affectionately. Will tries to bite back the hurt and be happy for her. “I will leave these here for you. Mike thought I might be less overwhelming than if he brought them.”

Will snorts. That’s one way to put it, and El doesn’t even know the whole story.

El doesn’t leave, though.

“Do… do you need company? For your letters.”

“I…” He’s about to tell her to leave him alone. El’s presence reminds him of what he’s lost, of pain, of the past. But that’s not fair, he knows. And, Will realizes as he considers her, he does want El here. Maybe she could help.

“Yeah, actually. Thanks, El. Could… could you read this over? I want to make sure mom doesn’t freak.”

He leads her to the couch and hands over the paper. El skims it thoughtfully. “You know I am not the best at letters.”

Will scoffs. “You’ve written like five hundred to Mike. I think you’re fine.”

An odd look crosses El’s face. “Maybe,” she says, and lifts the message again. “This looks alright to me,” she says finally. “Joyce will understand.”

Handing the letter back, El continues, “But you do not look alright, Will.”

Will’s foot taps sharply on the carpet. He can’t exactly argue, but he wants to.

“I haven’t had a chance to say I’m sorry, you know. And I should have,” El says. Will meets her eyes, and to his surprise they glimmer with a familiar sadness. “About Eddie.”

His heart flips over.

“Oh. El, it’s not—"

“I didn’t get a chance to say goodbye,” El says, cutting him off, and the words slam into Will like a semi-truck. “Mike said… that he protected me. That he was not just a distraction; he was a hero. He was my friend, Will. I should have been there. And I wasn’t.”

Will can’t bring himself to form words.

He’d forgotten. Somehow, in the morass of his self-pity, he’d forgotten; forgotten that Eddie had meant something to El, too. Because of course he did. Eddie was a proud freak, something his sister had never seen before. A proud freak, who allowed her into a world of fun and magic that up until now had belonged solely to the boys in El’s life. Maybe Will and Eddie had shared something different, shared other similarities, but that doesn’t mean he had a monopoly on caring for the guy.

Plus, Will knows they’d talked alone before, his sister and his friend. Especially on their way back to Hawkins. Will knows that Eddie had believed in El, unquestioningly, and even after knowing the truth, never once looked at her as if she was a monster.

Why wouldn’t she miss him?

“I’m sorry, too,” Will says softly. “I was too focused on myself. I should have done more yesterday. Today, at the hospital. For you. Everything just…”

He sounds a bit like Mike, Will reflects, and winces at the thought.

“It is all crazy,” El finishes for him, non-judgmentally. Will nods silently.

She reaches over and grabs her brother’s hand. “You have done nothing wrong, you know. You shared him with me. That is enough.”

“Shared him? Eddie is…” Will hesitates, then leans into it. “…is his own person, you know.”

El smiles. “But he was also your person. He was always right about you; you deserve to be proud of who you are. I have seen how much more confident you have been since you met Eddie. That makes me happy.”

The tears are back.

“Eddie was too big to be just… my anything, El. I’m glad you joined us at Hellfire. You belong there, just as much as me.”

“Yes,” says El. “Somehow. I don’t really understand.”

“Because he’s Eddie. Everyone belongs around Eddie.”

“And still, I could not save him.”

Will hurriedly cuts her off. “What? No, no, you were fighting Vecna. Come on, El. I was there, if anyone messed up, didn’t do enough, it was me. None of this is your fault.”

“It is, Will.”

“Don’t blame yourself,” Will says stubbornly.

“I should let you blame yourself, then?” El says, equally stubbornly.

Will doesn’t know what to say to that.

“You don’t understand,” El pushes on. She looks like she’s gearing up for something. “I… I could’ve saved him. I think I saved Max, Will. I think… I think I somehow brought her back. What if I could have done that for Eddie?”

Okay, that’s new.

“What? How?”

“I don’t know,” El says simply. “Maybe I am wrong. Maybe it was a miracle. But… I don’t think so. I should have done it for Eddie. I should have…”

Will launches forward and pulls her into his arms. “Look… skipping over the fact that, that you brought someone back to life… you do so much for all of us, El. Stuff none of us could ever do, not in a million years. So, even if you somehow made a mistake—and you definitely didn’t—you can’t blame yourself, okay? Please. It’s so wrong that I can’t stand it.”

“You are always the same, Will,” El murmurs into his shoulder. “Even if you are wrong. You are the best brother I could ever ask for.”

“Shut up,” Will says, trying not to smile. “We’re talking about you, and I’m not wrong.”

“No, we’re talking about you, and neither am I.”

“Maybe we’re both the best, then, if you’re gonna keep pushing.” Will grins, but the words feel hollow in his mouth.

“Or maybe we are both failures.”

The silence after that statement stretches for far too long.

“Eddie would hate you saying that,” Will says, finally.

“Yes. He would, wouldn’t he? Max would, too.” El twists her hands slightly in her brother’s shirt, and then says, “I'm sorry, Will. I... I just miss them.”

Will squeezes his eyes shut tight. “Me too, El. So fucking much.”

El nods into his chest, hands shaky.

“…you will write the perfect letter to Hellfire, you know. You are a good writer as well as a good artist. They will understand.”

“Will they, though?” says Will. “I’m not sure if I would. It feels so wrong to write this. Like, I don’t know. I should be telling them in person.”

“But you are writing it. That is what matters.”

Will sighs. “I hope you’re right.”

“I am. I promise.” El shifts in the hug. “Before you do, though. Maybe Mike is right, too.”

Will pulls back from the hug. “What?”

“You do kind of stink.”

“Asshole. You passed out in your day clothes just the same as me.”

“Girls smell better than boys, though. And I showered before I came down here. You should probably do that.”

“Sure,” Will snickers. He leans his head on her shoulder, and fiddles with the letter to his mom. He’ll write to the Hellfire Club. He has to. But for now, maybe he’ll hold on to this moment with his sister, as long as he can. “If you insist.”

Chapter Text

MARCH 29, 1986

Mike has spent the entire night trying to figure out a word for the way he’s feeling. He thinks he slept, quite possibly he did, but if so, he can’t remember it, and he thinks his dreams were terrible.

By the time the morning light filters through his window, however, and onto a floor that very conspicuously does not hold a sleeping bag and has not for the past two nights, he has landed on a word:

Mike Wheeler is distressed.

He could run through any number of basic reasons: losing friends, fighting monsters, the apocalypse. They are part of his distress, certainly. If anything, Mike is pretty sure those should be the main reasons for it.

But no. His stupid brain is ping-ponging back and forth first and foremost between his relationship issues, and it’s driving him insane.

How am I supposed to do anything against Vecna if I can’t get this shit figured out? he thinks. Flipping onto his side, Mike stares into his nightstand with reckless abandon.

Leaning against it, carefully wrapped, is The Painting.

And that makes everything worse.

Mike thinks he might scream (as if that wouldn’t wake everyone else up and cause a barrage of questions by itself).

Okay, he thinks. The lich gets us with our biggest fears. Classic, understandable. I’m pretty sure we’ve done that campaign about six times. How do I fight that? Make the worries go away. Perfect, easy. No problem.

Mike flips over again, this time onto his stomach, and buries his face into his pillow. He lets himself scream, just a little bit, as a treat.

Come on, Michael, get it together, he thinks. Make a list. A list is good.

Okay, then.

Distress One:  

…okay, maybe not. Mike’s had enough of One.

Distress Part A, then: Eleven.  

After they’d gotten home from visiting Max—an experience Mike knows he’s going to have to repeat frequently, but that he is not at all eager for—he’d made sure to get his girlfriend on her own. El clearly needed support, and that’s what a boyfriend is supposed to give. She’d broken down pretty good upon failing to find her best friend, and quite frankly Mike is still uncomfortable about how much she’s used her powers recently, so some time alone to process seemed prescient.

--Ugh. Will had given him a look of profound irritation when Mike had brought up the whole power thing in the hospital. Will… Nope, he’s part B. But still—Mike doesn’t know how or why no one else is ever worried about El like that. She practically dumps a bucket of blood out of her nose every time something bad happens, and, like, Mike’s no physician, but he does know the human body only has so much blood. And the way she’d been shaking after fighting Vecna, and the way he’d had to help her down the hospital stairs…

Yeah. Mike’s pretty sure he has a point, even if no one else, even if El herself, won’t listen to him.

So he had tried to talk to her. Give her a space to vent. Mike could practically see the thoughts running around in her head, but still, El kept her mouth closed. Until:

“I’m tired, Mike.”

Mike’s head had snapped in her direction so fast he thought he bruised something.

“What do you mean?” he’d said. “No, I’m an idiot, of course you’re tired. You can take a nap, if you want. Right here.”

He patted the bed beside him, but El didn’t move. Mike’s hand slowly slid back to his legs, and started tapping out a quiet beat on his jeans.

“…I’m worried about you, El. You’re not alone, you know? You don’t have to keep putting so much pressure on yourself.”

And I’m talking too much, Mike had thought. “You know you saved our asses, right?” he continued anyway, nudging her arm with his own. “You’re the best superhero ever. You’re allowed an off day.”

Still, El said nothing. Just leaned slowly into his shoulder.

And then they sat like that for what felt like hours.

It was awful. Not the physical closeness—Mike loved the reminder that El was, in fact, here with him. In the grand scheme of things, that situation was quite frankly a rarity, and one he fully intended to take advantage of. But the silence, the doing nothing, the saying nothing, the knowing nothing... Mike is a doer. If he can’t do anything, he’s miserable.

Finally, unable to take it any longer, Mike had jokingly suggested El swap out of the dirty clothes she’d been wearing for… well, too many days. (And if that meant she was gonna have to wear some of his, hey, relationships have perks.)

It was doing something.

“You can bring some down to Will, too,” Mike had suggested. “I… don’t think we’re talking right now. Who knows why, but I think you’d be less… overwhelming… than me.” He grabbed a hoodie, shook it off, and tossed it in El’s direction. “Here. This one’s for you.”

El just nodded silently as Mike bent down, looking around in his closet for clothes that might be big enough to fit his friend. Mike might be tall, but he’s thin as hell, whereas Will is built like a real person…

He was shocked by a sudden brush on the top of his head. El had leaned down and kissed his hair, oh so softly. “Thank you, Mike,” she whispered. “You… make me feel better.”

Mike hears the words in his head. Better for being different.

“Of course, El. That’s what boyfriends do.” He tried to smile. “I’m just sorry you’re hurting.”

El tilted her head, clothes in hand, considering sadly. “Papa said I wasn’t ready,” she said quietly. “Back in Nevada. You may make me feel better, Mike, and I appreciate that you try. I do.” She looked away, an odd look crossing her face. “But Papa was right.”

Without fanfare, without a goodbye, El had turned and left, leaving Mike behind with a pit in his stomach.

Back in the present, Mike throws an arm across his eyes and swears under his breath.

Of course a confession of love wasn’t going to be a magical cure-all. Of course his pathetic attempt at support wasn’t enough, not when El is certain she failed everyone. But he’d hoped that maybe, just maybe, they’d be able to be okay as a couple, even if nothing else was. That he and El could get through this, together.

But no. Even if El said Mike was helping… how could he be? If she still thinks she messed up?

Mike flips back over into his pillow, trying to let that worry go.

He fails.

Alright, thinks Mike. Strike one, I’m out.

Maybe I can do something about Distress B, then: Will Byers.

He groans.

Will’s obviously grieving. They all are. Whatever El had said, about grieving in different ways… yeah. Bang on. Joyce is doing a five-star teaching job as a mom, clearly.

The problem is… when Will is grieving, he comes to Mike.

Mike knows this. It’s a universal constant.

Or, at least, it’s supposed to be.

Sure, they’d had a rough time recently. And Mike knows why that is. He’d come to California, ready to make a damn commitment for once. To say, hey, El, I love you. You love me. We can make this work, no matter what. Signing all his letters “From” … it would just make the big moment better, right?

That was the excuse, anyway. But he was going to do it. He was going to do it.

And then Will ran up to him for a hug, Mike’s brain short-circuited, and all of a sudden he was a year younger, standing in the rain, saying things to his best friend that were really aimed more towards himself. Is it any wonder everything had been a bit of a mess until Will had actually confronted Mike about it?

Still… Mike had chosen El. He’d done it. Finally. Cleared away the cobwebs, the wrongness, the mistakes, and gotten his life sorted. Exactly how he was supposed to. On their drive back to Hawkins, Will had told him as much: you’re my best friend. Your girlfriend loves you. You’re our heart. We need you; we’ve been losing you, and, in our different ways, we’re both terrified of that.

That was all Mike needed to hear. If even Will… adorable, wonderful Will… was sure that Mike should choose Eleven… then Mike was damn well going to choose Eleven. Mike trusts that boy with everything he has. And they know each other better than anyone. If Will says El needs him, then Will’s right.

So, Mike made a choice.

And now… now he’s not regretting it, exactly. But he’d thought that making that choice would make his mind go back to normal. He and Will had patched things up, after all. Mike is over his little problem—

The word crush drives through his head like a bullet train. Mike ignores it.

--and he should be able to act normally around his best friend. Finally. After way too long.

But Will is avoiding him, at exactly the time that Will would usually be permanently glued to Mike’s side. Eddie is dead. Max is in a coma. Will is grieving. And Mike wants to be there for him. Desperately. They’re best friends. That’s normal. Besides, even if Mike sucks at helping El, he knows for sure he can help Will.

Mike looks down at the empty spot where a sleeping bag should be. He shouldn’t worry about it, he knows. Will’s been sleeping in the guest room with Jonathan, ever since that first night, when he’d looked at Mike like he was some kind of weirdo. Will’s with his brother. That should make sense. It does make sense.

But what about Mike?

I mean, he thinks crossly, I am some kind of weirdo. But Will doesn’t know that. Come on. What am I doing wrong here? Why is everything still falling apart?

The boy sits there on his bed, and reflects that, whenever Vecna comes back, he’s going to have a fucking field day with Michael Wheeler.

His pity party is only interrupted an hour or so later when his mom knocks on the door, shouting that Mike needs to get up and start finding things to donate to the shelter.

Fine, Mike thinks. I’ll shove all of this relationship shit into a box, too. Just pretend it doesn’t exist. Fuck you, One. Eat your heart out.

Robin is making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches in her high school gymnasium.

It is, she decides, a profoundly odd way to be spending time before the impending apocalypse.

The gym is chock-full by now, of both volunteers and survivors out of a home. Over half of them have visited the other sandwich table, where some girl Robin only vaguely remembers from Trig is making ham and cheese sandwiches.

In her mind it’s a rivalry, and therefore she’s been keeping a tally of every type of sandwich distributed. So far math-girl is winning by five, and Robin is 100% focused on flipping the score. She arranges her sandwiches as neatly as possible, cuts them precisely, puts on a winning smile, and hopes any of it might make her offerings seem more attractive—and the activity less boring.

You’d think the aftermath of a tragedy would be more… I don’t know, Robin thinks, reaching for the jelly. Harried? Panicked? But the people around her seem disconcertingly casual. Certain pockets are quiet and sad, sure; families surrounding their cots, trying to keep a space open for a mom or aunt or cousin who hasn’t shown up yet. Still others are noisy and almost cheerful, parents trying to entertain kids or friends joyfully discovering they made it out alive. Overall, it feels a bit like a fucked-up sleepover, and Robin doesn’t like that one bit.

She tries not to look over at the large Missing boards on the right-hand wall. Too many of those faces are familiar.

Okay, then, enough of that, Robin thinks. Back to sandwiches.

Math-girl has given out three more. Dammit.

“Enjoying your side quest?”

It’s Dustin. He’s not wearing a hat today, his long curly hair done up in an awkward ponytail, his shirt wrinkled and face harried. He’s trying to smile, though, and carries a large round tray of paper water cups.

“Heya, dingus; when’d you get here?” Robin reaches out for a cup, but Dustin pulls the tray away.

“Ah ah ah. Shelter patrons only. You want water, you know where the drinking fountains are.”

“Spoilsport.” She looks over at math-girl. She’s given out two more sandwiches. “I’m losing the damn race, here.”

Dustin follows her gaze. “Ham and cheese, huh? PB&J’s mortal enemy. I’ll try to put in a good word for you amongst the people; allies gotta stick together, after all.”

“Appreciate it.” Robin taps the plastic of the table beneath her, thinking, then leans towards Dustin, her voice now serious. “Haven’t seen you since our epic battle. Your family okay?”

Dustin starts, looking a bit surprised at the question. “Oh. Yeah. Yeah, it’s just me and my mom. House is up on a hill, lost a couple plates and shit, but in the grand scheme of things...” He tilts his head. “How about you?”

“Well, aside from the nightmares, I’ve been pretty lucky,” Robin says dryly. “Mom took a flower vase to the shoulder. She’s been complaining about it ever since, but that’s all.”

“That’s good,” says Dustin. “Well, not the nightmares, I guess. Or the vase.”

“Eh. Could’ve been worse, right? I get you.”

A woman comes up and asks Robin for three sandwiches. It’s a welcome distraction, and she mentally raises the tally as the lady walks away.

“Three points,” Dustin notes.

“Still a net loss.” Robin isn’t sure she wants to know, but finds her mouth still forming the question, much to her chagrin. “How’re the others?”

“I’m not actually sure,” Dustin says quietly. He fiddles with a water cup. “We went to see Max yesterday. It was… rough. She’s alive, but not… around. Her mind is somewhere else. El tried to find her, but no dice, and I haven’t heard from anyone since. I think Eddie’s death kind of…” He trails off, but Robin nods, understanding. She’s not great at mourning, she’s realizing, but she’ll be damned if she doesn’t try.

“He seemed cool,” Robin says.

“I don’t get it,” mutters Dustin.

“Well, the guitar, for one—”

“No,” Dustin clarifies, frowning. He lowers his voice. “Not Eddie. Him I get; he was awesome. It’s this whole situation I don’t understand. If Vecna could’ve done all of this, at any point, why didn’t he? Why send that spidery abomination first? Why kidnap Will, why send the Demogorgon, when all it took was, what, a few weeks? And four murders? To tear the world apart. El and Nancy barely put a scratch on him; it’s not like he really lost. He escaped them just fine. It makes no sense.”

“Maybe El gave him brain damage?” Robin offers.

 “Do you really think that?”

“I mean, no, but if it helps you feel better…”

Dustin scans the crowd. “He’s smart, Robin. You know it, I know it. And that’s the problem. There’s a reason for all of this, and we don’t know what it is. You’d think now would be the time to send in the flesh monsters, right? We’re all complete messes. The town’s half gone. Instead, we have time to help people. And we shouldn’t. If he wants death, letting us fuck around for a few days… it feels counterproductive.”

“You’re thinking about this too hard, if you ask me.”

 “I’m not, though. And you sound like Nancy.”

Robin raises an eyebrow.

“My point,” Dustin perseveres, “is that, since we’ll have to stop whatever comes next regardless, we’ve got to keep theorizing. We can’t let him get the upper hand.”

“Point taken—but seems to me that, for now, keeping folks alive is a pretty good fuck-you to his wrinkly ass. Just as good as thinking, at least.”

Dustin snorts, leaning back on the table. “Maybe you’re right. We could get lucky. I mean, we won’t, but we could.”

“Thank you, Captain Optimistic.”

Dustin laughs, before his gaze settles once more somewhere in the crowd. “I think I just saw Nancy and Mike pull up,” he groans reluctantly. “I should go help them get sorted.” His gaze softens as he turns back to Robin. “Take care, yeah? Good luck with the sandwiches.”

“Take care yourself, dingus. Good luck with those water cups.” Robin snatches one with a smirk and chugs it in one go.

“Fuck you, now I have to get a refill,” says Dustin, but he’s smiling. He turns to go, and Robin grins at his receding form.

The smile quickly fades upon the realization that she’s lost count in the sandwich wars.

“Shit.”

“Your brother leave something behind?”

Robin jumps about a foot in the air and nearly drops a slice of bread. “Jeez, you startled me! He’s not my—brother—”

Vickie is standing beside her, pulling on a pair of plastic gloves.

“Oh,” says Robin. Vickie’s eyes widen as she recognizes the other girl in turn.

“Wait—Robin?” she says, looking just as surprised. “I didn’t—what, what are you doing here?”

Robin gestures weakly at her half-finished sandwich. “Um. Making—making PB&Js. You know.”

Vickie grins. It’s lopsided and beautiful, so Robin can’t help but grin back.

“Well, I’m also on PB&J duty, as it so happens,” says Vickie. “Not that I know why; Sandra over there has like twice your workload.”

“Right?!” exclaims Robin, her irritation with math-girl overtaking all romantic anxiety. “I just lost track of how much she’s out-sandwiched me by! Quite frankly I need a pretty face to get more people over here, and it’s not like Dustin would’ve helped, so I’m glad—”

She cuts herself off with extreme prejudice, avoiding Vickie’s gaze out of sheer embarrassment. In doing so, however, she misses the soft, surprised look in the other girl’s eyes.

They lapse into an awkward silence for a minute. Robin opens her mouth to continue at the exact same time Vickie does.

“Jeez—I’m an idiot; I didn’t mean to, like, patronize you or anything, you’re obviously more than just a pretty face, like why else would you be here… I really should stop talking,” Robin sputters, as Vickie says, “I’m so sorry if that came off weird? Like, it wasn’t supposed to sound like ‘what are you doing here’, I meant more, ‘wow, you’re here too, nice surprise…”

They both peter out.

“Um—you first,” they say, once again in sync. Then: “No, you.”

The girls burst out laughing.

“Gosh, I’m sorry,” Vickie sighs, smile wide, cheeks red. “These days—it’s just, my brain—it’s kinda frazzled. Because, well—”

“Everything?” Robin offers.

Vickie’s eyes widen in agreement. “Yeah. Yeah… Like, this is all insane? An earthquake? In Indiana?”

You’re telling me, thinks Robin.

“Plus,” Vickie continues, barely stopping for breath. “My boyfriend, Dan—well, ex-boyfriend, now, like, definitely ex—he was visiting Hawkins, and then this all happened and, well, let’s just say it was not what he envisioned for his ‘romantic Spring Break’ so he was like—boom. ‘I’m outta here, back to Purdue, good luck Vick, sorry about the tragedy!’”

Vickie gestures wildly with her peanut-butter covered knife. “Which, you know, is fine, bordering on good, actually, because he was really starting to grate on me; like, he chews super loud, right over my shoulder, and his taste is awful—he trashed Fast Times because ‘it doesn’t have a plot’—I mean, really, I should have ended it right then and there—”

She trails off slowly, and glances, mortified, towards an enraptured Robin. “Oh God—sorry, I’m totally rambling about my dumb ex-boyfriend while people out there are suffering and—” She stops again, noticing the sandwich in her hands. “And I just made a peanut butter-on-peanut butter monstrosity. Excellent. I’m on a roll.”

Robin simply stares at the other girl with undisguised admiration, as Vickie desperately tries to remove the excess peanut butter from her sandwich.

“Damn,” says Robin.

Vickie blushes a gorgeous red, and Robin allows herself to watch.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Vickie says softly. “It’s like—it’s like my mouth is moving faster than my brain, runaway-train style, and I can’t seem to stop it no matter how hard I try.” She grins wryly. “You know what I mean?”

Robin carefully removes one-half of the peanut butter abomination from Vickie’s hands and plops it down onto one of her own freshly- jellied slices.

“There. Fixed,” she says, and smiles. “Don’t worry. I think I get it.”

“Oh, Jesus.” Jonathan steps back from the door of Hopper’s cabin, recoiling from the sight within.

They’d managed to escape Karen thanks to a passel of excuses. With the amount of federal attention on Hawkins, Nancy figured having El out in the open was probably a bad idea, and, at least theoretically, they had a backup plan in this old house. So Jonathan had ushered them all back to the Wheeler’s, Nancy had retrieved her weaponry from the front bushes, and now here they are, ready to make the cabin a home again.

Nancy reflects that, in retrospect, they really should have emphasized the ‘theoretical’ part of the concept.

“I keep forgetting how bad it is,” she hisses through her teeth, looking inside over her boyfriend’s shoulder. “Every single time.” Then she remembers that this is in fact El’s home, and changes tack. “I mean… I’ve seen Mike’s room look worse,” she says, louder. “We’ll make it work.”

Mike squints at his sister in disgust. “Seriously?”

Jonathan snorts. “You think he’s bad, you should see Will’s room.”

“Everything has a place and I know exactly where it is,” Will says pointedly. “And I am not as bad as Mike, how dare you.”

“Traitor,” mutters Mike.

Behind them, El eyes the cabin, a flicker of emotions running in tandem across her face. The discussion fades into the background, and the girl catches herself looking for shadows in the windows.

The last time she’d been here, Max had still been alive.

The last time she’d been here, Hopper had still been alive.

Those two facts weigh heavy on her shoulders.

Hoping to shake them off, El squeezes past Nancy and through the door. It swings on loose hinges, and she’s hit with a surge of smells, from things both familiar and rotten. Hopper’s armchair is growing moss. The couch is sunken in. The kitchen table lies in pieces, split down the center, and the countertops are covered in soil. Above her, faint grey sunlight shimmers in through the massive hole in the ceiling, and mixes with the rays from the shattered windows. Together they spatter the ruin with light. El wonders if, should she check, she’d find her own blood spattering the floor, too.

Or the Mind Flayer’s.

El takes a deep, shuddering breath.

The others have filtered in after her and catch a whiff of her mood. Will nudges her slightly.

“Hey, we’ll fix things up. This place will feel like home again in no time. Right, guys?”

Mike nods vigorously.

Nancy’s moving. She speed-walks over to the sink, fiddles with the knobs. There’s a horrible squelching, then rattling, and water pours from the faucet. It’s a disgusting brown at first, but gradually clears.

“Water still works,” Nancy shrugs. She reaches up above it and whips open a cabinet. “And, voilà.” She turns around, wielding a tin of baking powder and a bottle of Clorox. “Cleaning supplies. Of course Steve didn’t bother to use them while he was here. That man, I swear.”

She gives El an encouraging grin. El tries her best to return it.

Sensing a possible opening, Nancy pivots immediately to the boys. “Well, this shit won’t clean itself.” She throws the Clorox at her brother. “Let’s go.”

Mike grins deviously. “You’re giving me bleach?”

Nancy frowns and swaps it swiftly for a broom sitting in the corner. “No, you’re right, that’s a terrible idea. Here, El.”

“What is… bleach?” says El, eyeing the bottle warily.

“Oh boy,” says Nancy. “You guys clear away some of this crap. We ladies are going to regroup and discuss the blessings of chemistry.”

“I thought you were terrible at chemistry,” says Mike.

“Keep pushing, Michael. See what happens.”

It’s surprising to all of them how smoothly it goes once they begin—the surface cleaning, at least. Mike and Will take turns with the broom, one running it across the wooden floors, the other dumping the debris into trash bags and hauling it out front. Most of the more delicate furniture is unsalvageable—a year of exposure to the Indiana elements was never going to be kind—but Jim Hopper is no suburban mom, so a lot of the more basic furnishings are made of simple wood and only need a vigorous scrubbing.

The walls are worse. They’re covered in dirt, detritus, and mold, and the boys find themselves prying down rotten board after rotten board for Jonathan to replace. The two of them are not particularly handy, they discover, so El ends up yanking most of the boards out with her powers.

Meanwhile, Jonathan and Nancy make their way up to the roof using Hop’s rusty old ladder and do their best to begin repairing the massive hole therein.

Nancy is on supply duty while Jonathan wields the hammer. He is, much to his reluctance, quite good at the task.

“Lonnie might have been—” whack “—a real piece of shit—” whack “—and I never thought anything he knew would come in handy—” whack “—but I’m starting to be a little bit grateful he made me help him re-shingle the roof when I was thirteen,” Jonathan says.

“Yeah, well, that just means you can outshine him in everything you two have in common.” Nancy smiles. “That’s how I survived my dad, at least.”

Jonathan takes a moment to look up at her. She’s sweaty, her shirt is dirty, and her hair is falling out of its neat arrangement. Still, his heart pounds, and Jonathan thinks that Nancy has never looked more beautiful.

“Yeah,” he says softly. “Yeah, maybe you’re right.”

Down comes the hammer.

Below the couple, Will tosses Mike a water bottle, which he catches—barely. As the boy chugs the now-lukewarm water, he notices El passing by, hauling a new trash bag towards her old room. She does not make eye contact as she slams the door shut—or, rather, almost shut. It’s still open three inches.

“Just let us know if you need a hand!” Mike calls out.

He doesn’t get a response.

And now they’re alone.

Will bites his lip. The dappled light flickers across his friend’s lightly flushed face, and all of a sudden Will is desperately tired. It’s been two days, he thinks. Two days of all the wrong words flitting through his head; two days of saying nothing; two days of trying all the ways he can think of to feel nothing. All for a guy he loves more than anything.

I don’t want to lose him like this, Will tells himself. Yeah, Mike loves my sister. He always has. He always will. But I can’t keep hiding because of it.

Tell him, says Eddie.

Not yet, Will thinks. Someday, sure.

But not today.

“Did… did she talk to you?” Will says timidly. “At all? El, I mean.”

Mike turns, eyes wide. It’s a peace offering, and he knows it.

He jokes anyway.

“El, huh? What about you? Are we talking now?”

“Asshole.”

Mike grins lopsidedly. “Yeah, you’re right, sorry. There, see—apology accepted?”

“You’ve got nothing to be sorry for, Mike.” Will rolls his eyes. “I promise. I’m the one who should apologize. I’ve… been kinda weird, lately.”

Mike sighs back. Will can’t tell if it’s in jest or agreement.

“Dude. After—with them gone—” Mike fidgets with his hair. “I’d have been more upset if you weren’t being weird. I get it. I really do. I just wish you’d felt like you could come to me, that’s all.”

“El needed you,” says Will. “More than I did.”

“Bullshit. What was that stuff you said? ‘We both need you, Mike; you’re the heart.’ You know.”

Will feels himself blushing. “W-what? No, that was all El. I told you.”

Mike snorts. “Come on, Will. You’re my best friend. I’d be an idiot if I couldn’t tell that some of that speech was from you.” He smirks. “Except the heart, thing, probably. Or maybe not. You always did have a flair for the poetic.”

They’re getting a little too close to a topic that Will is not at all okay with. “Yeah, sure, Mike; it was all me. Come on yourself, give your girlfriend some credit.” He reaches down for the broom and very intentionally changes the topic. “‘Best friends’ again, huh? That wasn’t just a one off?”

Unless Will’s hallucinating, Mike goes a bit red himself. “Well, yeah. You were right, I told you. Give it a rest.”

“But you mean it? You’re not gonna vanish again the second things go back to normal?”

Mike’s face turns serious. “No. I made that mistake once, okay? I’m not gonna make it again.” His eyes seem to glow in the afternoon light. “Never.”

Will gulps. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Mike says quietly. “I know you might not want to believe me, but it’s true. I need both of you, too.”

Well, now Will is blushing again. Why does Mike have to be so intense all the time?

“Alright, Mike. I believe you,” he says weakly. He’s gotta get away from this, so he forces himself away from Mike and flops down on the busted couch. It’s been shoved against the wall for easier sweeping, and it’s super gross, but, well. The Upside Down was worse.

New topic, Will, goddammit. “I was serious, you know,” he tries. “About El. Did she talk to you?” He lowers his voice and nods towards her room. “She’s been… well…”

Mike frowns, and carefully joins Will on the couch. He recoils a bit at the damp but doesn’t get up. Will, meanwhile, resigns himself to the lack of distance.

“Not much?” Mike says, leaning his head back into the fabric. “I mean, a little. She said Brenner—he told her she wasn’t ready. Now, after all of this… she thinks he’s right.”

“That’s crap,” Will says indignantly. “That’s crap, and you know it, and I know it, and she knows it. If it wasn’t for her, if she hadn’t risked her life leaving the lab, Max wouldn’t be alive right now—”

“I know,” Mike says, frustrated. “Trust me, I know. I told her the same thing. It’s just… she’s never lost before. Not—not like this.”

“I…” Will wants to say she didn’t lose. That they didn’t lose, that they won, in some small way, at all. He shudders, and his mouth won’t form the words. “She’ll get another chance.”

“Let’s hope not,” Mike says immediately. “Let’s hope he’s dead, dead and rotting—”

“He’s not.”

Will says it so quickly, so confidently, that Mike flinches.

Will isn’t done. “Now that I’m back—now that I’m here, in Hawkins—I can… feel him. Vecna. One. He’s hurt, really hurt. But he’s still alive. And he’s furious.”

Mike leans a little closer. Will stares down at the cracked floorboards and pretends he doesn’t notice.

“It’s strange, you know?” he says, voice low. “Knowing now. Who it was, in my head, this whole time. I can still remember how he thinks, and…” Will trails off. He can feel it. The viciousness, the rage, and below that… “He’s furious, Mike,” Will repeats. “But he’s happy, too? And I, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt him happy, and—”

He grits his teeth and looks at Mike. His friend’s eyes are deep, wide, and terrified; scared for himself and for El and for Will, and Will loves him so much he can barely breathe. He doesn’t want to tell Mike what he knows. He doesn’t want to scare him any more.

But he has to.

“He’s not going to stop, Mike,” Will says, and his words shake slightly. “Never. No matter what we do. Not until he’s taken everything. Everyone. Until the whole world burns.” His voice hardens. “We have to kill him.”

Mike nods slowly. “I know. I know. And we will. I promise, okay?”

He shifts his hand. It’s a familiar motion, like he’s about to move it to cover Will’s. Like they’re kids again.

Instead, Mike’s hand twitches and settles on the moldy sofa.

Right, Will thinks. We’re not kids anymore.

“That’s just it,” Will says. “We. Who’s we? You mean El. I mean El.” He shifts his gaze away from Mike and towards his sister’s room. “You gotta prove it to her, Mike; that she can do this. You have to do what you did in the trailer. You have to be her anchor. Her heart.”

He steadies his gaze and meets his friend’s eyes. “I’m just family. You’re more. If anyone can help her through this, it’s you.”

“You really think so, Will?”

Will tilts his head. “I know so.”

“How?”

Will feels a smile tug at his lips. “Because you did it for me.”

Mike stares at him, mouth hanging open. Like he’s going to say something. Like he needs to say something. Will’s heart rises in his throat—

Then, suddenly, there’s a knock at the door. The moment shatters. The two boys meet each other’s eyes once more, and instead of hope, they find within them a spark of fear.

“Who could it be? Your mom, maybe?” Will asks, in a whisper.

“Wouldn’t Nancy tell us if she was coming?” Mike whispers back, desperate.

With a creak, the door begins to open.

And it’s not Karen Wheeler.

Nancy and Jonathan have moved to boarding up the windows. This, Nancy thinks, she can do. Ready, aim, strike. Simple enough.

Inside, on the darkened couch, Mike and Will are talking in hushed voices about something she can’t quite make out. She catches Jonathan watching them, his hammer resting idly on the wall. The look in his eyes is undefinable, and it hurts Nancy how close he is—and yet so far away. It hurt on the roof, too. It hurts even more now.

He’s right there, she thinks. Jonathan Byers is right there, right next to me for the first time in almost a year, and still, I don’t know what to do. Her chest aches.

Somehow Jonathan catches her gaze and pulls back quickly. “Hey, Nance. Sorry, I—” He sighs. “Look. Seeing them, it reminded me… I have to… I’m sorry I wasn’t here.”

Unspoken, she hears: I’m sorry you had to go through this by yourself.

She wonders why Steve doesn’t count.

“To be honest,” Nancy says, not particularly wanting to go there, “I’m glad you weren’t.”

Jonathan flinches. Just barely. But Nancy notices, and she knows exactly why. “No—okay, look. I just mean I’m glad you were with Mike and Will. Sure, they’d never admit they need a babysitter, but they do.” She rolls her eyes, forces a grin, and hopes Jonathan won’t get stuck on what is feeling increasingly like a Freudian slip.

“Yeah, well. I guess it’s good you were here, too. Otherwise, who would’ve been in charge?” He chuckles. “Steve?”

Nancy winces. “Hey, he’s grown up a lot, you know,” she says, feeling strangely (or not so strangely) defensive.

To her surprise, Jonathan doesn’t fight her on it, and Nancy wonders. Her boyfriend had mentioned in passing that he’d been there when Steve was arrested. He had refused to elaborate. Though she’d called the jail to check in, they weren’t feeling particularly sympathetic towards calls for Steve Harrington, so that attempt failed, too. Lacking further explanation, the particular sequence of events that led to her ex's incarceration has remained pretty murky in her brain.

“Yeah,” Jonathan says quietly, unaware of her musings. “Guess you’re right.”

All complaints dry up in Nancy’s throat, and the silence between them stretches near to breaking. Clearly something happened between the two boys, and she wishes she knew what.

A light breeze hits the back of her neck, sending shivers down her spine. It reminds her of the Upside Down. And that’s the other thing, she thinks. They’d been a kind of trio, her and Jonathan and Steve. They’d almost been happy. Even if only one of them was dating her, the things they’ve done as a group, the monsters they’d fought, the madness they survived… That sort of stuff brings people together.

This time, though, Jonathan had been forced to learn about it from the sidelines. Waiting on college, waiting for Nancy, waiting for life, while his girlfriend got to do what she does best—alongside her ex-boyfriend.

I shouldn’t be surprised at all, she thinks. I’d be upset, too.

“Nancy,” Jonathan says. The girl looks up from the nail in front of her, and is confronted by a gaze so piercing that in its somberness it almost speaks.

“Are we… okay?” he asks, and something inside of Nancy breaks.

I don’t know, she wants to say. I don’t know. It feels like you’ve been pulling away from me, and maybe I deserve it. I wish you could’ve come out here for Spring Break; I wish I’d been strong enough to come out to California for you; I wish you hadn’t left in the first place. I wish Steve wasn’t nice now, but he is, and he was here, and you weren’t, and I’m a terrible girlfriend for wanting the guy near me, the guy like me, who knows exactly what he’s been and is willing to change.

Nancy looks into her boyfriend’s eyes, eyes that have always been the same, and all of a sudden it feels like she doesn’t know them at all.

He’s changed too, she thinks.

Maybe I’m the only one who hasn’t.

“Yeah, totally,” she says instead. “Of course. It’s just—it’s hard. Life seems to keep getting in the way of our big plans, doesn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Jonathan says. His eyes seem to look straight through her. “Sure seems that way.”

“Hah,” Nancy says. “Too late to add ‘saving the world’ to your college resume, you think?” She tries for a smile, but it falls apart halfway through. “Your acceptance letter—god, it’s not like it really matters anymore—but did it ever come?”

Jonathan shifts on his feet, and lies to her.

“No,” he says. “Not yet.”

The dirt beneath Nancy’s feet feels, suddenly, like it is about to fall away.

“Okay,” she says. And then they’re hammering again, hammering boards into a wall that might as well be standing between them.

Behind the two teenagers comes the telltale crunch of wheels on dead leaves. But they’re too lost in hurt to hear it.

Eleven is throwing away the broken shards of her life.

Whoom. A Sorry! board, half eaten through with mold.

Whoom. A vintage lamp Hop had bought her from Cal’s Thrift, its lampshade moth-eaten and its base cracked.

Whoom. A radio that no longer works.

Whoom. El’s pillow.

Whoom. El’s blankets.

Whoom. A glass Coke bottle—

El hesitates on that one. It’s dusty, but whole, and in her mind it whirls before her on a piece of paper. Lands on a name—Billy.

Max’s laughter seems to echo through the empty room.

Heart heavy, El sets down the trash bag and kneels on the warped floorboards. With a swift gesture, she sets the bottle spinning again. With another, she keeps it spinning, and then she’s gone. Into the black, into her mind, and out of it, searching to the thrum of glass on wood.

She locks onto that memory of Max. An anchor. A path. The room around her shifts, and now it’s whole, everything just how it was last summer. For a moment, El is stuck, hands drifting across things and memories now shattered and gone.

She could look for Hopper with this, she realizes. Nowhere else is his presence stronger.

But El has been tempted before. And El has found dead people before.

If her new father’s face appeared before her, hollow and rotting… she would lose herself for good.

So, instead, she casts her mind out, following the sound of Max’s voice, out of the room, out of herself and her pain and searching for someone else’s.

Just like in the hospital, nothing comes. Every push sends Eleven further into the darkness, and the void yawns around her, threatening to consume her whole.

This time, though, instead of stopping at Max, El keeps going.

One attacked her in this room. One found her, through Billy, in this house.

And that same One is still alive, somewhere.

El clenches every muscle in her body, and, against all reason, casts her mind back to Henry Creel’s decayed attempt at a face.

This one she wouldn’t mind seeing dead on the ground.

As she reaches for One, the darkness grows deeper. El feels the water ripple around her feet, and she breaks into a run. She can do this. She will do this.

“One!” she shouts into the darkness, hatred blossoming in her breast. “One, where are you?”

She can remember his hand in hers, in the Rainbow Room, promising her the world.

She can remember that same hand, shattering Max into a million pieces.

She can feel that same hand around her neck.

All of a sudden, the shadows shift. They no longer seem merely threatening.

Now they are actively malevolent.

They are watching.

El stumbles to a stop, seeing nothing, knowing nothing, but filled with the absolute certainty that, inches away, beyond the veil, something is there.

And, in that moment, El realizes something else:

If she touches it, if it touches her, something will happen.

Eleven remembers the last time she touched something in the void.

She feels the water shudder beneath her with something approaching anticipation.

And El is afraid.

With a jolt, El’s eyes fly open. A fountain of blood spurts from her nose, and her heart pounds in terror, each beat loud as a bullet.

The Coke bottle stops spinning, slowly, slowly.

El squeezes her eyes shut again, but this time she doesn’t want to leave the house. Nor, she thinks, does she want to stay.

She doesn’t want to feel this. This loss, this failure, this fear, again, and again, and again, and again.

One by one, tears slip out of her eyes and mix with the blood above her mouth. Eleven cries, cries for Max, for Billy, for Eddie, for the twenty-one other citizens of Hawkins her failure has killed, and she wishes, wishes with every bone in her body, that she was stronger than this.

“I’m sorry, Papa,” she sobs. “I’m so sorry. You were right. You were always right. And I hate you for it. I hate you. I hate you.”

With a surge of rage, she whips the Coke bottle into the trash bag where it shatters against the remains of the radio. Eleven collapses into herself, then, because now she is all alone. No memories, no friends. Just her, and a room that had once been filled with love.

Suddenly, the cabin’s front door creaks open, and El freezes. There must have been a knock, she thinks wildly. There always is. Then: what about the bell? We had a bell. Did it break? Did the Mind Flayer break it? Is it One, did he hear me, he’s here, it has to be him—

Her fear overwhelms the sudden chatter outside her door.      

Now El hears heavy footsteps, and creaking floorboards, and a shadow slips through the gap beneath the door. She clasps her hands into fists and turns, crawling to her knees. She’s ready to fight. She’s ready to kill. The air around her crackles with static, and the muscles in her right hand tighten.

Knock. Knock. Knock.

El’s mind short-circuits. She knows that knock. And all of a sudden her eyes are welling up with tears, again, because the door opens—

And there, in front of her, is her papa.

Not the one who said she failed. Not the one who hurt and broke her. No.

Hopper.

“Hey, kiddo,” says Hop. And the dam inside of Eleven breaks wide open.

Hopper takes in the room, the rot, the trash; he takes in his daughter, sitting there, on the floor in front of him. Alive.

Alive.

Her face is white, stained in tears and blood. Her hair is short, buzzed like it was when he first met her. Her lip shudders, but instead of the fear he’s seen in so many people for so, so, long, in Eleven’s eyes Hop sees hope.

Before he can blink, El is flying through the air towards him, into his arms, knocking the wind out of his chest, sobbing as hard as she can. Sweat and blood and tears and snot stain his shirt, and Hop thinks distractedly that he couldn’t be happier.

“I-I kept it open,” Eleven sobs. “The door. Three inches.” She tears her face away from his shirt, and when their eyes meet Hop sees the world in them. “I never stopped. I never stopped believing.”

Now Hop’s crying, too. Damn, he thinks, you stupid, wonderful kid. Look what you’ve done. He can’t stop himself from smiling, though, and he doesn’t want to. “I know, kid,” he says, voice shaky. Raising his rough, callused hand, he cups his daughter’s face. “I know.”

They hold each other for what seems like an eternity. Hop can’t believe he’s seeing her again. El can’t believe he’s real. They stand there, in the doorway, in the wreckage of their lives, and for the first time since the earthquake, the world feels a little bit more whole.

Eventually El forces herself to pull back. She wipes the residue of, well, everything, off of her face as best she can, and takes in the man before her, one part at a time. She can’t get carried away. Not now, not after everything. No—she needs to be sure. She scans Hopper as hard as she can, looking for the details that will inevitably be wrong.

And he is wrong. This Hop is thin; eerily so. His face is sharp, his hair is gone, and pale white scars stain his chin and neck. He’s wearing clean clothes, somehow, despite how off it feels, and even though his face still screams Hopper, it looks older. Sadder.

And El’s heart breaks.

Because it’s too much. He’s too much. He can’t be real, he can’t be. It has to be One; it has to be a trick, the cruelest joke imaginable, because too much has changed and Hopper is dead and she is losing her mind.

Her father is talking to her. “I’m here now, kid,” he says softly. “I’m here. And I’m never going anywhere, ever again, okay? I’m here, and I always will be.”

El nods, and she can barely stand from the pain. This is everything she’s ever wanted. One can’t fake this, her hope whispers. He can try. He will try, someday. But he can’t right now. I know my papa. I know him. He’s real.

Please, she thinks. But she can’t believe it.

So El reaches out, slowly, intentionally, her fingers landing on her father’s chest. She wills her mind to widen, sending out a surge of thought in a wave that has broken walls. She searches, she prods, she pushes at the illusion, willing it to break, hunting for the monster. Somehow, though, Hop’s body doesn’t fade into Henry Creel. His chest doesn’t sink, it doesn’t decay. He stands there. He lets her search. He lets her in.

This is Jim Hopper, she realizes, as her list of tests reaches its end. There are no lies here, no tricks. Despite her terror, nothing is left behind but the truth:

This is her dad. He’s real.

For the first time, El truly believes. And as she does, she is struck with a surge of love so strong it nearly knocks her off her feet.

“It’s you,” she says, too late. “It’s really you.”

“In the flesh,” he says.

“You look…” What? Broken? Sad? Hurt? Who did this? El wonders. What happened to you? What do I say?

“Not fat?” Hop finishes instead, dryly. “Yeah, I know.”

El finds herself smiling. She feels crazy. This is crazy.

“Your hair,” she says.

“Oh. Yeah,” Hop says, as if he’s realizing it himself. “Guess I kinda stole your look, huh, kid?”

El chokes out a laugh. “What do you think?” Hop asks, running his hand across his buzzed head.

“Bitchin’,” Eleven whispers.

Hopper laughs too, then, and as he does, the fracture that has lived in El’s chest for a year starts to heal.

Just a little. Just a bit.

He’s home.

On the porch a similar reunion is under way. This one is no less tear-filled, no less relieved. Joyce Byers holds onto her children with every bit of strength she has left in her arms and sobs openly. Nancy and Mike stand by the door, shoulder to shoulder, beaming.

Hop leads El out to join them. “You weren’t the only one who didn’t stop believing,” he says gruffly.

“Oh,” says El. Mike reaches out, and she collapses into his arms.

“My baby,” Joyce breathes. She’s holding Will’s face, looking him over. “You’re okay.” She turns to Jonathan, and her eyes soften in a silent prayer of thanks. “You’re both okay.” The relief in her voice is palpable. “Thank god.”  

“Mom,” Will sobs in return. “You, you got my letter.”

“Letter?” says Joyce. “What letter? No; we came straight here, from…” She trails off. “Shit.”

“So much for that business trip, huh?” Jonathan says, laughing through his tears.

As Joyce searches for an answer, her eyes land on El, then widen.

“Eleven,” she says. “El, honey—”

Mike nods his head in her direction, and El leaps into her adoptive mother’s arms.

“I am glad,” she manages to say, “that you went on your… business trip.”

Joyce grins, pulling El in tightly. “Yeah. Business trip. Guess it was, ah, more exciting than I expected.”

El grins, but as she does, her eyes land on a strange black car about fifty feet behind Joyce in the woods. A tall, severe woman leans against it, cigarette in hand, a faint smile on her face.

“Who…?” she starts.

“That’s Agent Stinson,” Joyce explains. “A friend of Dr. Owens. She brought us here; she’s on our side, I promise.”

“Oh,” Eleven says again.

“Oh this, oh that,” Joyce says. “Come here. All of you.” And she drags her three children in for another hug.

From the woods, Stinson nods in their direction, satisfied, before getting in the car and driving off in a puff of exhaust. A job well done.

On the porch, the Wheeler siblings stand awkwardly next to Hopper.

“Hey,” says Mike, for lack of a better option.

Hop raises an eyebrow and takes the kid in. He barely has to look down now to do so.

“You’ve grown,” he comments.

“You’ve shrunk,” Mike smirks.

“Oh, shut up, Wheeler,” Hopper says, and in one swift movement hugs him. For a moment Mike thinks about resisting, but the gesture is so genuine that he can’t help but lean in.

He’s leaning on Hopper’s chest, wondering if the newfound heart in the man means that Hop might actually approve of him now, when he notices something land on the ex-chief’s shirt.

It looks like… snow?

“Mike,” Nancy says urgently. Hop hears her tone and separates from the teen quickly.

“What?” he says briskly. “What’s wrong?”

Slowly their gazes shift towards the sky.

The Byers’ have noticed it, too. One by one they all stare, uncomprehending, at the clouds that fly by, thick and dark.

“What on earth—” Joyce begins. Then her youngest son flinches, hand flying to the back of his neck, and suddenly everyone realizes exactly what’s going on.

“No fucking way,” Mike whispers. Hop is too stunned to even comment on it.

“It’s him,” Will whispers back. “He’s… he’s doing…”

Will knows what the white flecks starting to coat the ground are. He knows them intimately, better than anyone else here. Beside him, his sister is staring at the flecks—the spores—too, dawning comprehension on her face. She reaches out. Catches one on her hand.

It feels cold. Cold like ice. And it almost burns.

“It’s from the Upside Down,” El says, disbelieving.

“How?” says Hopper, hurrying to her side. “And who is ‘him’?”

El isn’t listening. She follows the clouds. Their path. And her face pales.

“We need to go,” she says. “I need to see.” And she takes off into the woods at breakneck speed before anyone can stop her.

The others exchange glances.

“Well?” says Mike. “I’m not just gonna let her go alone.”

“No rest for the wicked,” mutters Hop.

They chase El through the trees as fast as possible, but she’s almost supernaturally swift. Her pulse pounds in her ears, and she feels the whispering of wind. Each spore that lands on her exposed skin, on her cheeks, on her hands, stings like ice and seems to say, Faster. Faster.

She can practically hear the forest rotting. Feel the worms crawling through the earth, the decay seeping into the Rightside Up. Into her world.

What has he done? her mind screams. What has he done?

And then the trees are gone, and El bursts out onto an open hilltop. Her family isn’t far behind her, and one by one they stumble to a stop at the sight that greets them.

Roane County stretches out, turning gray. A vortex of clouds and smoke swirls out across the fields like a thunderhead, like the Mind Flayer, reaching, grasping, spreading. Red lightning explodes from pillar to pillar of the shifting storm, and the sound of thunder hits them all at once. As familiar as it feels, the flashes highlight no smoky figure—just empty sky aping its shape—and El almost heaves a sigh of relief.

Almost.

Because the blight is billowing out from Hawkins itself, front and center in the panorama, the town fully choked in ethereal smog. El can see each of the gates now, glowing like fire, coughing out toxic fumes and spores that speckle the sky, as helicopters and sirens flood the air alongside them. She can feel the temperature dropping, can feel One, or something attached to him, at least, exploding out of the scars he carved into the earth and changing it, turning everything black and white, consuming everything it touches. Marking it all as his.

“Holy shit,” Nancy breathes from behind her. El spares a glance back at the sound. Jonathan is holding Nancy’s hand in a death grip. Will and Mike stand shoulder to shoulder, petrified, eyes locked on the disaster unfolding in front of them. Joyce is leaning into Hop, wordless, and the man’s face is almost as dark as the sky.

Shuddering, El turns back. She has to face this. She thought, maybe stupidly, that they’d have more time. That One would be hurt for longer, that they’d be able to make a plan.

Of course not, she thinks bitterly. Of course we get no break. Of course we cannot be happy. Not even halfway-happy.

Then she blinks.

Then blinks again.

That feeling of black and white… she’d thought that it was just the starkness of the smoke against the grey sky. Just a feeling.

But it isn’t.

The trees… the grass… the flowers…

They’re all dying.

And the rot is crawling towards them with horrifying speed.

Like a girl possessed, El feels her feet move forward, slowly, towards the grasping hands of decay, towards the field full of the purple and yellow flowers she loved so much.

She kneels. The flowers are gone, petals collapsing to the cold earth, stalks hardening and sharpening. Mold grows on them, she can see, but it’s not spreading from somewhere. There are no vines on the ground, there is no logic to it at all. It is as if, as the shadows spread, as the spores fall, the places they touch become infected internally. Nothing grows on the outside that doesn’t burst out from within, white fluff and black ooze seeping into a world it does not belong to.

The world itself is dying.

“The Upside Down,” El says slowly. “It’s growing. Infecting.”

“Like a virus?” Will says, scared. He knows what that might mean, but El shakes her head.

“No. Like…” She frowns, searching for the words. “Like a concept. It is like how Mrs. Gracey told us about… the spread of information? It is not a physical infection. It is… energy. But it becomes real anyway.”

She shivers, and is all of a sudden aware of how deeply cold it has gotten. “We have to go,” El says. “If he is there, in Hawkins… if he is attacking… we need to stop him. Before he kills everyone. Everything.”

Everyone exchanges glances. Then Hop nods.

“Right,” he says. “Right.” And he points at El, at Jonathan, at Nancy. “You three. You’re coming with me. Joyce, you go back to the cabin. Keep the boys safe. Stay here. I’ll try and contact Stinson again, send someone up to help.”

“What?” exclaims Will.

“No!” yells Mike.

“Hop,” says Joyce, voice strained. “We can’t get separated. Not again.”

“Look,” says Hop. “We’ve got one car. Jonathan drives. Nancy and I shoot. Whoever this guy is, El kills him. We come back. That’s that. I am not risking anyone else’s lives today; not when we just got home.”

“We’re not useless,” Mike sputters. “Will—he can feel Vecna, he can find him. It’s not fair, El’s been doing this all alone.”

“We did just get you back,” Joyce says softly.

“Joyce, listen to me,” Hop says. "This is more important."

Everyone looks at El. She suppresses as best she can the rush of doubt that fills her. How can she do this? How can they all look at her, like, like, like she deserves their respect?

“We need to hurry,” is all she says. Mike rushes her, and Will is close behind.

“Are you sure?” they say.

El says nothing.

“You’re coming back,” Will says. He has to physically stop from grabbing the back of his neck as he winces. “You’re coming back to us. Okay?”

Mike just looks at her.

“I believe in you,” he says steadily.

Hesitantly, El nods.

Behind the boys, Nancy gestures towards the cabin. “Let’s go kill this piece of work.”

“Yes,” El says, voice low. “Let’s kill him.”

They tell Hop about Vecna on the way. It’s the abridged version of the story, sure. They don’t go into the full backstory El told them. Don’t mention the name Henry Creel. But as Jonathan peels off the dirt road leading to the cabin, full speed ahead, Nancy makes sure to be extremely clear about the consequences of Vecna’s curse.

Hop’s eye twitches, and his fingers play across the holster Stinson had given him. He’s sitting shotgun, and his eyes track the rot spreading across the trees they speed by.

“He’s like El. But evil,” Jonathan finishes quietly.

“That’s a damn scary thought,” Hop responds. “Stinson mentioned a serial killer from the Upside Down, but this… this is worse than we expected.” Behind him, out of view, El shrinks down into the seat. Nancy sets her shotgun aside and shakes her gently.

“You okay?” she whispers. “You’re not him, remember. We’ll do it right this time.”

“And what if we don’t?” El whispers back.

Nancy pulls at a loose string on her pants. “That won’t happen.”

Neither one quite buys it, but, soon enough, they’re arriving at the outskirts of Hawkins. Then the suburbs. The neighborhoods. Jonathan is taking them downtown, to the center of the disaster, where Vecna no doubt lies in wait.

There is no one to stop them. No police, no civilian cars, but there are people in their driveways, staring in awe up at the sky, wincing at the freezing poison seeping down, gaping at the unnatural clouds swirling up from around their homes. Hundreds crowd the sidewalks, pushing, gradually, towards downtown, towards the Army Jeeps gathered there, towards the smoke. Towards the storm.

There are soldiers in the square when Jonathan pulls up. The rifts are blocked off with caution tape and barricades, and men are rushing back and forth, yelling. Three helicopters rest, hunched, on the far side of the square.

There is no sign of Vecna.

With no hesitation, no time to worry about the implications, the entire group spills out of Jonathan’s car.

“Where is he?” Nancy says hurriedly.

“Describe him again,” Hop says gruffly. “Quickly.”

“Big, white, corpselike; covered in those vines the Upside Down has.”

“Right, and again, you saw him in person, you're sure--”

“I'd better have. I shot him in the chest.”

“I’m sorry, you shot him? You went into the Upside Down, alone, on purpose, to confront—oh, who am I kidding, of course you did--”

Their frantic rush is stopped when a National Guardsman steps in front of them.

“I’m sorry, folks. No civilians allowed. This is a disaster area—”

El’s lip curls, and her neck jerks to one side. The world sparks, and the man flies sideways into one of his trucks.

“Hey, kid, wait—” says Hop, but she ignores him. She’s already past the barricades, marching towards the seeping rift.

For a moment no one moves, as Jonathan and Nancy and Hop and the soldiers process what just happened. Everyone hesitates. A few men raise their guns, but drop them just as quickly, flinching as though burned. El approaches the darkness. Opens her mouth. She prepares to call him out, call him here and kill him—but weirdly, she can’t feel him—

“Attention, citizens of Hawkins.”

One by one, everyone turns. On the desiccated grass strip in front of Melvald’s, a few hundred feet away, stands a camera crew. El’s arrival and attack had been so sudden that they hadn’t noticed it. Before them, holding a megaphone, is a woman. Tall. Cold. Dressed in Army fatigues, platinum blonde hair cut close and short, eyes like steel. She speaks, the crew records, and behind her stand two men El recognizes:

Dr. Owens—

And Lt. Colonel Jack Sullivan.

“Attention, citizens of Hawkins,” the woman repeats into the megaphone. El thinks, idly, that if she’s being filmed, she probably doesn’t need it. “My name is Colonel Carolyn Jackson, and I have been appointed by the President of these United States as acting Commander of the Hawkins Exclusion Zone. Effective immediately, the city of Hawkins, Indiana is placed under martial law. Furthermore, its bounds and citizens shall be subject to a strict, federally-enforced quarantine. No one may enter Hawkins, and those who leave may not return until the government rules it safe to do so. For now, stay in your homes. Do not venture out. Do not approach the rifts. Do not inhale the smoke. If you are not currently at your place of residence, return there immediately. Members of the National Guard will approach you individually to inform you of your rights and next steps.”

The woman’s voice is as cold as the air around her as she continues. “For your safety, I urge you to follow these instructions. The US Government will not be held liable for casualties suffered by those who do not. We thank you for your cooperation.”

With a shriek, the megaphone cuts off. And there is silence.

Pure, dead silence.

El is immediately, terribly certain that One is not here.

That One was never here.

That One didn’t even need to be here to cause… whatever it was that happened.

But Colonel Jackson is.

And she’s staring at El, now, with those harsh, dark eyes. Unblinking. Thoughtful. Self-assured. The girl has no choice but to meet her gaze, and in doing so she quails.

Within those eyes is a look that simply says, I know.

And Colonel Jackson smiles.