Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Of course, that’s not the end of the story.

…

The Mind Flayer flees.

It uses no such name for itself, of course. Something so alien and ancient has little use for names. Names are for the kind of individual, solitary creatures that its conquest devours. Names are for the weak.

Perhaps, as it flees, though, as it withdraws from the spy, as it retreats to its stronghold to lick its wounds, it is reconsidering the weakness of these individual, solitary, named creatures.

…

Will blinks awake into unbearable heat, suffocating smoke, wet hair, and his mom’s arms wrapped too tightly around him.

For a second, he thinks he sees a flicker of red light, in the corners of his eyes. And then it’s washed away with blue-white. And then - it’s gone.

And his mom pulls back, hissing as she shakes out a hand. Exactly like she’s done when Will’s zapped her, a million times before.

“Will?” she asks. She’s staring intently into his eyes, her hands gripping his shoulders so hard it starts to hurt, but Will thinks she’s almost starting to sound…relieved.

The other voice that speaks up, startling Will, doesn’t sound quite so relieved. “Whoa! Hey, are you okay?”

Will looks up, and sees –

It takes him a second, a blink or two, to put all the pieces back in place. To remember that all of this is familiar, now that there’s no stranger crowding him out of his own head. They’re in what must be Hopper’s cabin, behind the curtain that cuts off where the chief sleeps from the rest of the building, where he hasn’t let the Party go on the rare occasions they’ve visited El here.

They’re all sitting on the floor. The mattress on the bed Will’s resting against is scorched black, in an outline around the vague shape of a person, and for some reason it’s soaking wet, two charred, soggy lumps that might once have been pillows sitting at the head. His mom is holding him, still a little too tight, and – Will’s brain blanks, terrifyingly, for one yawning second – his mom’s boyfriend has kicked over a plastic pail that Will vaguely recognises from their house, spraying a few leftover drops of water over the floorboards as it rocks back and forth on its side.

And Bob’s kicked over the pail because he’s down on his knees beside –

“Jonathan!” Will shouts, struggling against his mom’s grip to get over to where his brother’s sprawled out flat on his back on the floor. He misses the relieved look that sweeps over his mom’s face, for a split second before worry replaces it.

“Sweetheart? Jonathan? Bob, what happened? He was fine a second ago – I, at least, he said he was fine -”

Will ignores his mom and Bob both as he scrambles over to Jonathan. “Oh no, not again…”

The words have barely started to leave his mouth, though, before Jonathan’s blinking, raising a hand to his head as he slowly pushes himself up to a sitting position. “Hey, careful there, you hit your head when you went down,” Bob says, offering a hand, but Jonathan ignores it. He’s looking at Will, and only Will, like he’s watching some kind of minor miracle unfold in front of him.

“Jonathan?” Will asks, suddenly uncomfortable. “Are you okay?”

Jonathan’s smile is big and helpless, like he couldn’t stop it if he tried. “Yeah,” he says, just a little louder than a whisper, and Will’s horrified to realise his brother’s a few seconds away from tears. “Yeah, I’m okay now.” He reaches out to grab Will’s shoulder, giving it a little shake like he’s checking that Will’s really there. “Are you okay? You -” Jonathan’s smile gets, impossibly, even wider, his glossy eyes threatening to overflow. “You sound more like yourself.”

It takes Will a second. And then, a smile stretches itself across his face, too, without his even thinking about it.

“Yeah,” he says, nearly choking on the words through a too-tight throat. “I feel like myself.”

Jonathan looks, for a moment, like he might say something more. But instead, he just leans forward and pulls Will into a huge, smothering hug.

Even though the added warmth is uncomfortable in the sweltering heat, Will doesn’t even hesitate before returning it.

It’s barely a second later that his mom drops to the floor beside them, gathering Will and Jonathan both up in her arms and giving one ferocious squeeze before she starts pressing kisses into the top of Will’s head. He puts up a token protest – he is thirteen, after all – but doesn’t actually try to squirm away.

His mom only breaks off the barrage of kisses to look up and over at Bob, who’s hovering awkwardly a few feet away, just watching them with a little wistful grin. Will’s mom looks down at Will, and raises one eyebrow, like she’s asking a question.

Will looks over at Bob, sorts through his blurry memories of the last few days, and nods.

His mom catches Jonathan’s eye and gets another nod before she turns back to Bob. For a second, Will thinks she looks almost – scared. Unsure, at the very least.

But then she wrinkles up her nose, bobs her head to one side in an obvious no-hands summons, and says, “Oh, get over here,” like she’s laughing at her own nervousness.

Bob doesn’t have to be told twice.

He gives good hugs, Will’s not entirely surprised to discover.

And if Will accidentally shocks all four of them when Steve Harrington unexpectedly barges into the cabin yelling for Jonathan, nobody says a word about it.

…

A little less than a mile from the lab and the closed Gate, in a field that still bears the marks of burning, beside a hastily-dug hole burrowing down into the dark earth, Mike Wheeler, to the very great relief of his frightened friends and terrified sister, wakes from a dead faint with a slow, spreading smile. And, to anyone watching closely for it and not blinded by the stark shadows cast in the Camaro’s blazing headlights, the faintest flicker of red, then blue-white light just behind his eyelids.

“I’m okay,” he protests, brushing aside Nancy’s and Lucas’ fussing so he can sit up, wincing as he touches the back of his head. “I’m…better than okay? I’m back!” The look of awe that crosses his face quickly crumples into a twist of disgust, though, as he looks up at Nancy. “Why’re you disappointed?”

Nancy sputters, hard, for a few seconds before she finds her voice again. “I’m not – that’s not – that’s not about you. I’m happy you’re not dead – and obviously have your powers back to be a jerk about it.”

“Oh, sure,” Mike shoots back, but he’s smiling.

“It really isn’t about him,” Nancy says, defensively, into Lucas Sinclair’s scrutinizing look. “All right? If Mike’s got his powers back, that’s got to mean something went right. We should get back to the house and wait for the others.”

When no movement follows this proclamation, she raises both eyebrows with a grin that’s more of a grimace. “In the car? Now?”

“Steve really did want to come charging to your rescue,” Barbara Holland tells Nancy, as Lucas and Dustin Henderson’s fight over the shotgun seat gets cut short by Max Mayfield pushing between them to flop into the disputed seat. “I told him to drop me off and go find Jonathan instead. Because that…thing couldn’t see my future, I thought maybe, if it thought he’d changed his mind, he might be able to draw it off. That way I’d have a better chance to get to you and help get you out without anybody getting eaten.”

“That’s pretty smart,” Nancy admits, grudgingly.

“Nancy…” Barb debates with herself, for a moment, before letting out a long, deep sigh. “There’s something else. Something I think you need to talk to Steve – and Jonathan – about.”

“I know, I know,” Nancy starts, rolling her eyes, but Barb interrupts.

“No. You don’t. And I’m not done. There’s something about you, about all three of you, that that…Mind Flayer…wasn’t letting me see.”

Nancy shrugs, with a tiny shake of her head, a silent ‘so what’.

Barb looks her in the eye, in the dark, with the dramatic backlight cast by the Camaro’s headlights catching in a few stray dark curls loosely and romantically framing her heart-shaped face, and resigns herself. “It wasn’t letting me see anything with a good outcome, Nancy.”

It takes a second. But even in the dim starlight, out of the dusty yellow columns of the headlights, Barb can see the moment Nancy’s eyes flick just a fraction wider.

She’s not surprised. Nancy Wheeler has always been the smartest person Barb knows.

Nancy seems at a loss for words as they finish piling into the car, though. She doesn’t say a word as she buckles herself into the driver’s seat, except to snap, “Seatbelts, if you’ve got them,” back at the too-many passengers crowded into the too-small backseat.

Robin Buckley doesn’t say a word, either. But there’s sympathy in the look she turns in Barb’s direction, sympathy that at least doesn’t look like pity.

And Mike doesn’t say another word about Nancy being disappointed all the way back to the Byers’ house.

…

In another story, when Billy Hargrove first meets Karen Wheeler, it’s under very different circumstances.

In another story, Billy has more time to prepare. More grasp of his surroundings. More control over how he presents himself, how Karen sees him, how the situation unfolds. More control. In another story, perhaps it’s that control, the power in it, that eventually pulls him back toward her. Some people, denied control over their own lives, will take a sense of power anywhere else they can get it.

But this is not that story.

And in this story, when Billy and Karen first meet, when he scrambles to scrape up a little charm to spread too thinly over the rage, it’s already too late.

…

“Sorry,” the young man says, with a roguish smile that might have been disarming if it weren’t for everything else about this situation. “You’re not exactly catching me at my best. I’m just worried sick about my little sister.”

Karen thinks, somehow, that he probably doesn’t mean Barbara’s new friend with the valiant attempt at home highlights. “Max?”

The boy’s smile gets wider, showing a glimmer of teeth. “You know Maxine? Do you know where she might’ve gone?”

Karen thinks of all the yelling and thumping she heard earlier, about Steve’s battered face and frightened eyes, and has never felt so grateful to be telling the truth. “Sorry, I have no idea.”

“Of course,” the boy says, with a slow nod, that smile lingering around the corners of his mouth like it’s going sour there. “Because if you did, you’d tell me, right?” The look he turns in Karen’s direction is steady and solemn and somewhere in the neighbourhood of innocent. “I’m sure they’re all good kids. Sure your son is a good kid. Wouldn’t hurt a fly. But I found Maxine here with a pack of boys and Steve Harrington, and the next thing I know, I’m waking up on the couch with a probably-broken nose, and Maxine and all of those boys are gone. And you must know what kind of stupid sh- stuff boys will do to try to impress each other. Especially if there’s an older boy around who they think is cool.”

It's a chilling set of implications. If Karen didn’t already know it’s only half the story, she might even be taken in.

“See, I’m not supposed to come home without her,” the boy says, and for the first time since he locked eyes with Karen, the edge of ironic humour slides out of his voice completely. “This wouldn’t be the first time Max has gone and gotten herself into some kind of…trouble. She needs somebody to keep an eye on her.” Karen wonders if she’s imagining the bitterness, the barely-restrained anger, as he adds quietly enough that Karen isn’t sure which of them it’s for, “And apparently that somebody is me.”

“I wish I could help you,” Karen says, taking a step back. She’s sure, this time, that she catches a flash of fear in the boy’s eyes, before he hastily smooths it over with a conspiratorial, cajoling look that Karen is sure must make him very popular with the Hawkins High student body. “But I’m as in the dark as you are.” She’s the one sounding bitter when she adds, “I tried to stop them from going, and they locked me in a closet.”

“You knew they were leaving?” The boy takes two quick steps toward Karen, and Karen takes two quick steps back. The boy backs away again, with a heavy huff of breath, but he doesn’t take his eyes from Karen’s face. The intensity in his stare is giving Karen a chill. She has to wonder just what is going on, that he’s so desperate to find Max. If he really believes all the things he just implied about Steve and the boys. If, maybe, it would reassure him to know that the kids hadn’t left with Steve –

But Karen takes in the wild light still in the boy’s eyes, and remembers the terror in Steve’s, and has sudden second thoughts about letting this boy know she helped Steve sneak out of here under his nose. “I did try to stop them. It’s not safe to be out tonight. Look, why don’t you head home? I’ll make sure Max gets back, safe and sound -”

“I told you, I can’t -” the boy starts to spit, rounding on her, hands clenching furiously on thin air, and Karen takes another quick step back. The boy bites down on his own angry words, clamping his jaw shut and huffing two deep breaths through his nose before he opens his eyes and plasters on a smile that’s obviously aiming for charming. It’s falling more than a little short. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d said. I can’t go home without her.”

“Well, of course you can. Just tell your parents she’s sleeping over with friends. I’ll drive her home -”

“See, you don’t understand,” the boy says, slow, through a smile that’s starting to look more like gritted teeth. “I can’t go home without her.”

He takes another deep breath, before Karen can say anything, before she can start to back away again, and holds up both hands, palms out, like he’s trying to calm a skittish animal. “Sorry. Thought mothers were supposed to have some kind of intuition. Supposed to notice and care when a helpless kid like Max is in trouble.” The toothy grin he shoots Karen, with a mocking twist of his head, is entirely mirthless and almost feral. “My mistake.”

Karen’s on the verge of snapping back when something, some memory, pings sharply in her head. Something she’d overheard, somewhere in the chaos of tonight. A memory in Max’s sarcastic voice.

…stick your fingers in your ears and shut your eyes and pretend it’s not happening? That’s how people get hurt.

Karen likes to think she’s an observant person. That she pays attention. Somehow she managed to keep her kids safe, keep their secrets, in Hawkins, for nearly seventeen years. That couldn’t have happened if she didn’t notice what’s going on around her.

“Billy,” she starts, cautiously, aware that she’s most likely stepping out onto a minefield and already bracing herself for the blast, “why can’t you go home?”

…

El falls asleep in the truck on the way back to the Byers’ place.

Jim can’t blame her. He’s feeling like she’s got the right idea. If he didn’t have to drive, he’d be happy to just lie down and pass out for a good forty-eight hours or so. As it is, it’s all he can do to keep his eyes open and fixed on the road ahead.

He knows Sara’s awake, in the back, sitting with her back leaned against the front seat and looking out the rear window. He knows she’s not asleep. He can hear her not talking just behind him. But he doesn’t know how to break the silence that’s filling up the cab around them.

Finally, he clears his throat and just takes a run at it. “You get any dinner tonight?”

There’s a sound from behind him that might be a laugh, surprised and choked off almost before it makes it out. But a second later, Sara says, like she also can’t believe they’re having this conversation, “Yeah. Jane and I got dinner.”

“Good.” Jim’s not sure where to go from here. He’s not sure how to boil down more than ten years of silence into the short drive back from the lab to Joyce’s place.

He’s just about to open his mouth and take another fumbling shot at it when Sara says, “But if there’s an all-night diner around, or a bar that’s open late…I’m not hungry, but I could use a chance to. Refuel.”

Jim takes a deep breath in. Lets it out slow.

“I think the Hideaway might just be closing,” he offers, after a moment’s thought. “Not many places out here stay open past midnight and draw much of a crowd.”

“That’s one thing I like about Chicago,” Sara says, like she’s agreeing. “The nightlife.”

This time, the silence they sink back into feels just a little less loaded.

“You live with somebody, back there?” Jim asks, watching the trees flicker through his headlights like ghosts as he takes first one curve, then another. It’s late enough that the world’s gone very still and quiet, a sleepy anticipation hanging over the warm darkness all around, like the whole world is just waiting patiently for the sun to start to rise. These are sometimes his favourite hours of the day, the quiet ones before dawn, where everything feels very close and secret and it’s easy to pretend he’s the only person left in the world. “That…’Kali’ you mentioned?”

The silence from behind his seat suddenly turns frozen. Jim risks a glance in the rearview mirror, to see Sara sitting too tense, too still.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” he hastily tries to correct course. “Just – did she take good care of you?”

He can hear Sara breathe out, behind him, close enough that he thinks he can feel the slightest ruffle of disturbance in the air even though she’s facing the other way.

“She did her best,” Sara says, after a moment. “I did too. We – we loved each other very much.”

In the quiet, the heater blares a rattling white noise as it pumps warmth over the three of them. The road hisses past underneath, dark before them until the amber glow of the headlights eats it up, one yellow dash at a time.

“Good,” Jim repeats, at last. He’s not sure what else to say. “Maybe – maybe I’ll get to meet her, someday?”

He thinks that’s a smile he can hear in Sara’s voice as she says, “Maybe.”

Jim can feel something like a smile trying to sneak across his own face, too.

Up ahead, through the trees, there’s the beginnings of a glow he thinks must be Joyce’s yard light. The road’s totally deserted, except for them, but he still flips on his blinker for the turn.

“Listen,” he says, even though the words seem to want to stick in his throat. “If you wanna go back there. Back to her. I won’t stop you. Can’t stop you. But…there’s always gonna be a place for you, here, with me. If you want it.”

He can hear Sara shift against the seat’s back, glances over to his right to see her leaning one arm over into the front so that she can look him in the face. There’s a second where he can’t believe what he’s seeing. Can’t believe it’s really her. It’s going to take some getting used to.

Jim’s already looking forward to it.

“I did just get here,” Sara says, with a twist of humour, before turning a surprisingly soft smile down on El, still passed out with her head resting against the window. “Think I’ll stick around for a while.”

El snorts a little in her sleep, and shifts in her seat before sinking back into an apparently deep dream.

“I’m,” Jim starts, turning back to watch the road, gripping the wheel as hard as he can as he starts into the turn. “I’m happy you came back.”

The silence from beside him lodges a lump in his throat, which grows bigger and thicker and more choking with every second that passes without Sara saying a word.

“Yeah,” she says, at last, and Jim breathes out at the sound of a smile that beams through her voice. “I am too.”

…

In another car, headed toward the same destination, Joyce Byers only realises she has tears streaming quietly down her cheeks when Bob Newby asks her, with some alarm, what’s wrong.

“Nothing,” Joyce says, and realises as she says it that it’s true. “Nothing’s wrong. Everybody’s safe. It’s over. We’re all right. Everybody’s alive and it’s over and we’re all right. Absolutely nothing is wrong.”

Bob shoots her a concerned glance when she chokes a little on the last ‘nothing’.

But, thankfully, with the boys huddled together in the backseat, he doesn’t say anything about the one problem they didn’t solve by closing the Gate. Joyce is grateful for that. Jonathan must know, by now, and Joyce is sure he’s just waiting for a moment to ambush her, but – well. Will’s been through the wringer tonight. They all have. They deserve to enjoy their hard-won moment of relief. At least for a little while.

They really did all make it out the other side. Her family are safe. Will’s safe. And it’s over.

Joyce can feel a lump rising in her throat, fresh tears stinging her eyes. She swallows hard, flicking her eyes up toward the ceiling in a vain attempt to keep them at bay.

“Darn it all,” Bob says, letting go of the wheel with one hand to go fishing in his jacket pockets. “You know, it crossed my mind before we left the house that if you and the boys are going to be getting bloody noses all over the place, I should start carrying some tissues. But do you think I stuck some in a pocket when I had the thought?”

Joyce looks over at him, peering over the wheel of Jonathan’s car into the dark as he rummages blindly through his pockets, and finds the thought coming out of her mouth at the same time as it takes shape in her head. “Marry me.”

She has to give Bob a shove in the shoulder to stop him staring, wide-eyed, at her. “Bob, the road!”

Bob turns back to the windshield just in time to yank Jonathan’s car around a curve. Something metal makes a noise of protest, and the sharp turn slews Joyce against the door, but there doesn’t seem to be any permanent damage done.

“Please – don’t joke about that, Joyce,” Bob says, taking the next wind in the road a little more smoothly. He sounds a little strangled, and more than a little sad. “You know there’s nothing I’d like better.”

“Who says I’m joking?” Joyce asks, and, thankfully, this time doesn’t nearly drive Bob to run them off the road in shock.

It takes all her concentration to brush aside the sudden truckload of doubt that she thinks could be coming from her or from Jonathan, and the freefalling terror she knows is hers and hers alone. Maybe she is moving too fast. Maybe she doesn’t really know what she’s getting into. Maybe she is making a mistake.

But Joyce only has to look over at Bob again for a lot of that doubt and fear to wash away.

He hadn’t known what he was getting into, with her and her family. And yet, he’s done nothing but rise to every new challenge, without complaints or conditions or questioning what’s in it for him. It doesn’t hurt that a steady, reliable man with a steady, reliable job would look better on a custody application than Lonnie, but…it’s so much more than that, as well. Bob’s consideration, his kindness, his generosity, his trust…his unfailing positivity…and the way he just – talks to Joyce about the things that matter –

Like it’s a practical demonstration, like he’s the one reading her mind, Bob clears his throat and says, carefully, “Should, uh, shouldn’t you talk this over with Will and Jonathan, first?”

All Joyce can do for a long moment is stare at him, at the round, friendly features of his face illuminated dimly in the diffuse glow thrown back from the headlights. She wonders when those blue eyes, that perpetual shadow of a self-deprecating smile, so warm and inviting, became as familiar and beloved as home.

“…is it possible,” she manages, faintly, finally, “to marry you twice?”

That shadow of a smile bursts into a full, beaming grin.

In the seat behind them, Jonathan lets out a long, full-throated groan.

But, when Will says, “Well, you can have my blessing, Mom,” Jonathan sighs with a smile in it, and agrees.

…

The Byers’ house steadily fills back up.

El’s friends swarm around her the moment she steps down from the truck, chattering excitedly and doling out hugs and cheers and slaps on the back. She’s almost astonished as the story of their adventure in the tunnels, what they’ve done to try to help her, spills out in bits and pieces. That astonishment quickly turns to an emotion she can’t quite pin a name to, but that threatens to spill out her eyes and squeeze out when she throws her arms around her friends.

She hesitates, a moment, when she finds herself face-to-face with Will. But his smile, when he sees her, is wide and relieved.

“I heard you saved the world tonight,” he says, with a bob of his head in Mike’s direction. “And me, too.”

El bites her bottom lip. And offers out her hand to shake.

Will grabs it and pulls her into a too-tight hug, leaning against her like his legs are still having trouble holding him all the way up.

“Thanks,” he whispers in her ear.

El smiles a little smile, against his shoulder, and squeezes Will back as hard as she can.

…

Jim knows, as soon as he steps down from the driver’s seat, as soon as he sees Joyce with that absolutely radiant smile beaming pure joy from every inch of her lovely face. He knows before he even sees Will, pushing his way through the little knot of kids that drew tight around El as soon as she set foot on solid ground. The kid’s all right. They’re all all right, and, for the first time in what feels like a very long time, Jim feels…light.

Like maybe it really is all gonna be okay.

He’s only just started to make his way over to Joyce when she looks up from shooing Jonathan in the direction of the station wagon that’s pulling in behind them, and catches Jim’s eye. He hadn’t thought it was possible, that she could smile any brighter, look any more astonished with joy, and ha can feel it pulling an answering smile to his own face. In the yard light, with the sodium glow catching in her stray hairs and bouncing off the fine sheen of sweat dried on her skin, he could swear she’s literally glowing.

But Jim can feel the smile that’s welled up in him starting to fade as Bob draws up beside Joyce. As he tucks an arm low around Joyce’s waist and she turns in toward him, that radiant smile never dimming even a fraction, for a gentle, lingering kiss.

And Jim doesn’t have to be told.

He knows.

“Hey.”

The quiet word, the touch on his arm, take Jim by surprise. He whips around, still edgy and nervous from the night’s various terrors, and Jonathan Byers pulls his hand back, raising both with the palms out in a gesture of surrender. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” Jim says, like the very idea’s absurd, even though Jonathan’s eyes are, as ever, clear and too knowing. “What d’you want, kid?”

For some reason, Jonathan’s eyes flick over past his mom and her paramour’s little public display of affection, and land on the station wagon that had pulled in behind them, the one he’s apparently supposed to be on his way to see right now. And – it takes Jim a second to recognise the Harrington kid climbing out of it. Looks like he went three rounds with a meat grinder. Jim wonders what the story is there.

“Just…” Jonathan says, looking at Steve Harrington’s smashed-in face like it’s easier than meeting Jim’s eyes. Just when Jim is about to give up on the whole conversation, though, give the kid a pat on the shoulder and tell him to go make sure his little brother’s friends don’t accidentally smother Will, Jonathan turns the full force of his attention back to Jim. “Don’t give up on my mom, okay? She cares a lot about you.”

Jim doesn’t know what to say. What to feel. He’s heard some of the shit that gets talked about any weird loner, been the butt of some of it himself. But until tonight he’d never really believed Jonathan had a sadistic bone in his body. “Kid…”

“No. I know, I -” Jonathan stops, shutting his eyes and giving his head a little shake. “That came out all wrong. Sorry.”

He stuffs his hands into the pockets of his jacket, hunching his shoulders a little as he returns the wary, wide-eyed stare Harrington’s fixed in his direction. “It’s just, tonight…maybe I was wrong, about some assumptions I made. Maybe it doesn’t always have to be somebody on the outside, looking in.”

And with that cryptic fuckin’ proclamation, he shoots Jim the ghost of a smile and heads for the porch with a call of, “Nancy!”, leaving Jim to scratch his head and wonder just what the hell that was all about.

“What was that?” Sara asks, from behind him, and Jim startles for the second time in about as many minutes. He hadn’t realised she was still hanging back.

“What was what?” Jim bluffs, grabbing the door of the truck. “Come on. You still need something to eat?”

Sara gives him an odd look. But she doesn’t say anything more, thankfully. Just piles into the passenger seat.

And if Joyce Byers turns a worried frown to watch the truck pull back out of her driveway, Jim Hopper certainly doesn’t notice or care.

…

The first thing Karen Wheeler does, when her kids pile out of the midnight-blue Camaro in front of the Byers’ house, is yank them both, ignoring their protests, into a desperate, crushing hug.

The second thing she does is murmur, low but loud enough for both Mike and Nancy to hear her clearly, “You two are both grounded for the next two weeks.”

“What?” Nancy protests, trying to pull back. “That’s not fair, Mike was the one -”

Karen just grips her two oldest tighter, and repeats her edict. “Both of you. Two weeks.”

Then she plants a kiss on each of their foreheads before, reluctantly, forcing herself to let go.

“What’s he still doing here?” Max Mayfield pipes up, and Karen turns to see Max’s stepbrother silhouetted in the front door. From the host of murderous stares turning in Billy Hargrove’s direction, Karen would hazard a guess that Max’s friends aren’t any happier about it than she is.

Billy’s words are sarcastic, but the tone of his voice and the flat, wary way he’s watching Max don’t seem to match up. “You know, it’s the funniest thing. Somebody seems to have stolen my car.”

Max just glares.

“Doesn’t matter,” Billy says, after a second of tense silence, with a flickering glance in Karen’s direction. “This very nice lady’s offered to give us both a ride home.”

“A ride?” Max repeats, in apparent disbelief, and Billy scowls.

“We have,” he spits, like it tastes bad. “An arrangement.”

It’s one that Karen’s not sure, entirely, is going to work. But there’s no way to find out except to try. Which is how she ends up dropping off her own children at home before pulling up outside a shabby little white house on Cherry Road, with both Billy and Max and their glowering ceasefire in tow.

The door opens, on Karen’s third knock, to reveal the most stunning redhead Karen’s ever seen in her life. A flash of envy minnows through her – those cheekbones, honestly! That complexion! – and she misses a beat just long enough for Billy to grind out, “Susan,” like the word’s being forced out of him with thumbtacks.

“What’s going on?” the woman who must be Susan Mayfield asks, worried eyes searching over Max before fixing on Karen’s face. Karen tries to put her brain back on its rails, remember her script.

“Nothing too serious, don’t worry. Your son -”

“Stepson,” Susan and Billy both correct her, in eerie unison. Karen takes a breath, and pushes forward.

“Right. Billy had a little fender bender on his way over to pick Max up from our place after A/V club. I don’t think it’s anything too serious, but somebody should keep an eye on him tonight, in case he’s got a bit of a concussion.”

Susan’s pressed the tips of three fingers against her mouth in apparent surprise, her eyes wide and tremendously blue. For a second, she looks just like the little china milkmaid Karen’s mother used to keep in the glass-fronted cabinet in the dining room, the one that used to flash to the front of her mind whenever a book told her a girl character was pretty. “Oh, my – what happened?”

“Some asshole rear-ended me,” Billy grumbles, to the step, and Susan frowns.

“It’s not very polite, that kind of language in front of a guest -”

“It’s not very polite to leave a guy with whiplash and half a concussion standing out in the cold in the middle of the night, either, but here we are,” Billy says, with a big, mocking smile, before pushing past Susan into the house. He doesn’t look back.

“I really am sorry about waking you,” Karen offers, into Susan’s wounded, sleepy confusion. The flannelette nightgown Susan must have worn to bed is shorter than Karen would have expected, for November weather, but if Karen had those legs she’d certainly be showing them off, too. “We, um. It’s been quite a night. Billy was confused, and Max was worried about her brother -” Karen doesn’t dare look over and see whether Max is bothering to act accordingly, or what Max thinks ‘acting accordingly’ looks like – “and she couldn’t remember her new phone number, and of course we still have the old phone book, and I tried to ask the operator for Mayfield…but we got them all rounded up and back here safe eventually?”

She has to make herself look back up from Susan’s legs to meet her eyes. “The kids were worried that your husband would be upset. He’s welcome to give me a call, I’ll explain everything. It really was just such a – comedy of errors. Most of them mine.”

Susan gives a jerky nod, with a watery attempt at a smile. “Max? Come on, get to bed.”

Max hurries into the house, with one last inscrutable glance in Karen’s direction.

Karen shores up her smile before turning back to Susan. “The A/V club meets most Wednesdays, so you know, and then there’s the odd event on another night. Your daughter’s more than welcome. I’m sure Eleanor enjoys having another girl around. I can run Max home afterwards, no trouble…”

She thinks that’s fear that flashes across Susan’s face, just for a second. “Neil really likes for Billy to -”

“Oh, of course. I just mention it because sometimes things run late, or they get together for games and snacks afterwards, and there’s really no way to say beforehand whether it’s going to be one of those nights. Billy’s more than welcome to stick around and wait for Max, though, I’ll just have him call home if the club’s running late. It’s not as though we don’t have the room. Will Byers’ brother has been doing the same thing for ages. And we always end up with more snacks than those kids can eat, anyway.” Karen realises she might be overdoing it, and bites off the rest of the words crowding up on her tongue. She doesn’t cross her fingers. But she wants to.

Susan gives her a thoughtful look. “You’re…”

“Sorry. Karen Wheeler. Michael Wheeler’s mother. Ted’s my husband – here, I’ll give you our number.” Karen fishes in her bag for a scrap of paper and a pen. “And you can give us a call if you need anything, all right?” she finds herself compelled to add, as she scratches out seven digits and her name on the back of a Big Buy receipt. “It can be hard, making friends in a new town.”

Susan’s smile is twitchy and vanishes quickly. But she takes the paper. “Thank you. Goodnight, Karen.”

It’s late enough, when Karen gets home, that she puts Ted off with promises that she’ll explain everything in the morning. She just wants to sleep. Well, check that Holly’s safely asleep in her little room, that Mike and Nancy are both getting ready for bed, give her aching feet a good soak and read a little mindless bodice-ripping fluff to try to wind her racing heart down, and then sleep.

But instead, Karen finds herself lying awake in bed beside a peacefully-snoring Ted, staring up at the dark ceiling above her, memories unspooling in vivid Technicolour before her eyes. Memories full of teeth, and blood, and the stink of gunfire, and the rising shriek of alarms, and the bitter metal taste of terror on the back of her tongue. How close she came, tonight, again, to losing her children forever.

And, for reasons she can’t quite explain or understand, her mother’s china milkmaid. And that party where she spent seven minutes in heaven with Hal Stone. The same party where, on a dare, a drunken Joyce Horowitz had briefly brushed her lips against Karen’s before running away laughing. Joyce doesn’t remember it. But Karen does.

Just like, for reasons she can’t quite explain or understand, she can’t stop remembering the startling blue of Susan Mayfield’s eyes.

Karen doesn’t see Billy Hargrove again, except on the odd occasion he actually does stop to pick Max up from her house. And even then, he’s in and out as fast as possible, sometimes only honking from the street outside.

But every time Neil Hargrove calls and asks, Billy’s been hanging around at the Wheelers’, waiting on Max.

And nothing hits the papers about children with psychic abilities. Nothing new bleeds into the Hawkins rumour mill. No unsmiling men in serious black suits turn up on the doorstep. As the weeks grind on, turning into months, Karen slowly, slowly starts to relax. To exhale.

And even though she notices Billy exchanging hard stares with Nancy and her friends on the rare occasions he runs into one of them at the house…he never says a word.

…

For a little while, at least, almost nothing is wrong.

Jim Hopper starts to apologise before Sara even sets foot through the door of the cabin that’s been home base for the last year. Well, maybe not ‘apologise’. Maybe ‘manage expectations’ is closer to the truth. “There’s not a lot of room for three. And I dunno what kind of state Joyce left the place in.” The lingering smell of smoke and damp ash, despite the open windows, does not exactly bode well for that, but, well. Everybody’s safe. Everybody’s alive. “But I can make up the couch, you can take the bed for tonight, and we’ll think about something more permanent in the morning.”

“Or you could have my bed,” El offers, with a glance up at Hopper.

Sara doesn’t notice either of them, looking around the two small rooms with an expression that neither of the other two can quite pin down.

“Thanks, the couch is fine,” she says, at last, stepping through the door her father pushed open for her. “I didn’t bring any clothes or anything, though…”

“We’ll get you sorted out,” Hopper says. “I know it’s not much, but…”

Sara turns, and her smile is small, but it’s real. “It’s home.”

…

For a little while, at least, almost nothing is wrong.

Mike Wheeler serves out his grounding with bad grace, especially since he knows his sister isn’t really serving hers at all. But his parents haven’t yet been able to catch Nancy going out her bedroom window or sneaking anybody in the same way. And the one glimpse Mike caught of a cluster of perfectly-circular quarter-sized bruises on Steve Harrington’s collarbone before Steve hastily fixed his polo shirt hasn’t reappeared, or been considered particularly compelling evidence in the Wheeler family court. Still, it’s only going to be a matter of time before Mike gets Nancy caught. And then she’ll be in so much trouble.

Nancy, for her part, already has a plan for once her house arrest ends. Maybe not the very first day she has of freedom, but certainly the second, finds her climbing out the passenger side of Jonathan Byers’ car in front of the cabin in the woods.

“I want to learn to shoot,” she says, before Jim Hopper has a chance to ask what’s wrong. “Jonathan’s the only other person I know who could teach me, and he doesn’t like guns.”

“Nancy,” Jonathan protests weakly, but when Nancy arches an eyebrow at him, caves without rancour. “It’s true, I don’t. And a lot of what my dad tried to teach us -”

“What d’you want to learn to shoot for, anyway?” Jim asks, more curious than accusing. “Thought you could -”

Nancy nods, briskly, like her power is some annoying inconvenience she’s unfortunately obliged to acknowledge. “I can. But I won’t always necessarily be able to. If something like that – Mind Flayer ever turns up again, that can steal people’s powers, or if I get put in a situation where it’d be more dangerous to reveal I have them, or if I just get as – exhausted as I was, that night, again -”

She shivers, hugging her own arms. Somehow Jim doesn’t think it’s just the November cold getting to her. “I never want to feel that – that helpless. Ever again.”

Jim looks her over from head to toe. Takes in her defensive pose, the defiant jut of her chin, the adamantine in her blue stare.

“Your mom know about this?” he asks, at last.

Nancy’s smile is small and grim and triumphant. “What she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

…

As for Steve, he says his goodbyes to Nancy and Jonathan in the Hawkins High parking lot after school, before following Barbara Holland over to her little car. She’s parked two rows over from his gleaming BMW, but Barb doesn’t say anything. Steve looks like he’s got something on his mind.

But he waits until Barb is halfway through unlocking her door to get it off his chest. “Hey, Barbara, I just…um.”

“You and Nancy and Jonathan finally talked,” Barb offers, and Steve shoots her a grateful and only slightly helpless smile. “I know. Congratulations.”

She yanks the car door open, but Steve puts a hand over hers, stopping her from climbing inside. All trace of that broad, easy, popular-boy smile has melted off his face, and his eyes are serious and weirdly intense.

“Okay, first, thanks,” Steve says, which shouldn’t maybe make Barb feel as bitterly satisfied as it does. “But also – how’d you know?”

Barb pushes her glasses down her nose so she can give Steve a flat stare overtop of them.

Steve, apparently undaunted, presses on. “Yeah, no shit, obviously, just -” He breaks off his own sentence with an angry huff, giving his head a little shake as he turns it away. He runs a hand through his hair twice, thoroughly mussing its perfect swoop, before turning back to Barb with a look of steeled determination. “Dammit. I’m making a huge mess of this, okay? I just wanted – the whole thing. With Jonathan. You know.”

As difficult as it is to follow Steve’s ramblings, Barb thinks she does know. She gives a cautious nod.

Steve’s stare doesn’t get any less intense. “You figured that out before I did. Was that just – a premonition, too?”

Barb can’t help it. She glances back over her shoulder, back across the parking lot, to where Nancy’s just slipping into the passenger seat of Jonathan’s car.

She doesn’t realise Steve’s followed her line of sight until she hears him say, weirdly soft for Steve, “Yeah. She’s amazing.”

Barb jerks back around, but an excuse dies on her lips when she sees the way Steve’s half-smiling at her.

“Think you’d have to have a heart of stone not to be at least a little bit in love with her,” Steve says, with another, meltingly fond glance back toward Nancy and Jonathan. Like he just can’t stop himself from smiling, just knowing the two of them exist.

Barb did the right thing. She knows that. She can see that, right in front of her.

It just. Stinks.

“Yeah,” she agrees, because what else is she going to do? “I guess I’ll just have to go cry into a pail of ice cream and get over it.” After all, it’s not like Nancy and Barb as anything other than best friends was ever a future with any future in it.

“I’m guessing I’m the last – well, one of the last people you want offering,” Steve says, without taking his eyes off of Jonathan’s car as it pulls out of its spot. “But if you ever need a refill on that ice cream, and maybe somebody to share it with…just let me know your favourite flavour.”

A year or so ago, Barb would have assumed it was a jab at her weight. A nasty joke about the broad side of a Barb.

Today, though, she smiles a little despite herself. “Oh, Harrington. You owe me several pints of butterscotch ripple.”

…

For a little while, at least, almost nothing is wrong.

But almost nothing does not, unfortunately, mean nothing.

And even as the kids are putting the last of their grievances to bed, there’s one pretty significant loose end still preying on at least three minds.

The number Doc Owens gave Jim Hopper, after the first time around, is now out of service. Probably something to do with the monsters that ripped both him and his lab open. Hard to run a place when most of your staff are dead. Jim’s hopeful that this means they’ll finally shutter the damn place for good. But then, he knows better by now than to trust hope.

He’s got no idea how they’d even begin to explain the situation to a regular doctor. But as one day stretches into two, as Joyce Byers slowly winds herself tighter and tighter, it starts to sound like a better and better idea to try.

Thankfully – depending, of course, on what a person’s thankful for – on day three, the government comes to them.

Despite probably still being laid up in some top-secret hospital bed somewhere with a mess of stitches in his leg, Owens manages to sound almost cheerful on the phone. Given the message he’s bearing – higher powers than him want Will Byers checked out, and this time, it’s not a request – it’s not what Jim would call the most tonally appropriate. But at least the call gives him a chance to do a little bargaining. He ends the conversation with an assurance that Joyce’ll be in to see somebody for some tests before the end of the week, and tried not to think gloomily about how that could easily be too late. Joyce hasn’t admitted to any other symptoms, yet, but with Will still so shaken up – Jim’s not sure she’d say anything even if she felt like she was dying.

He breaks the bad news that evening, when he stops by the Byers place – well, the Byers-Newby place, now, he figures. The kids have been gravitating there after school, sharing homework and its frustrations with El and then setting up (but not, apparently, playing, not without Mike Wheeler) some kind of board game with a whole bunch of dice that sounds, from the amount of math involved, like more homework. But El seems real happy to be included, and she doesn’t seem to have any issue with all the math, and it’s keeping the whole bunch of them out of too much trouble, so Jim’s not gonna ask too many questions.

Today, though, the usual swarm of kids seems to be elsewhere. El’s sitting up at the kitchen table with Joyce, the two of them looking over a catalogue that’s spread out across the tabletop. Jim catches sight of what he thinks is a page full of fabric samples before the kid jumps up from her chair. “I’ll get Sara.”

She’s down the hall before Joyce can explain, “Jonathan got a new record. He thought she might like it.”

“More of that vampire shit from England, I’m guessing.” Jim gives his head a shake, dropping into the chair across from the one the kid just vacated. “It all just sounds like noise to me.”

He tries not to feel a little glow at the wry smile that twists itself across Joyce’s face, the conspiratorial finger she places against her lips. “It doesn’t matter if we like it. What matters is that they like it.”

“So long as they don’t make me listen to it.” Jim turns his hat over in his hands, taking a breath. “I got good news and bad news. Which do you want first?”

He’s just finished filling Joyce in on the situation by the time the kids come back down the hall. Jonathan’s breathing a sigh of relief before he’s even set foot into the kitchen. But Joyce doesn’t seem too terribly encouraged, even by the news that somebody in the know is going to get her checked out. “By the end of the week? Hop…”

“It was the best I could do,” Jim protests, even though he’s been thinking the exact same thing since he got off the phone with the doc. “Believe me, I tried. I told him he needed to get you in right away, I told him time was a factor, he knows the background and he’s doing his best to get you seen sooner – but this was the best he’d put his word to.”

“I’m just happy you’re finally going to see somebody,” Jonathan says, and Joyce gives him a tight-lipped smile that’s closer to a grimace.

“Well, I don’t know if three days really deserves a ‘finally’…”

“In this case it does,” Jonathan argues, but Sara cuts him off before he and his mom can really get into it.

“ ‘Get you seen’? What – are you sick or something?”

The shadow that passes over Joyce’s attempt at a smile says more than that attempt at a smile does.

“Maybe,” she says, with a cautious glance over at El. “I – I might be. Very sick. So, um, so I’m going to see some doctors, to find out if it’s true, and what they can do to help me.”

“Sara could help,” El says, looking up at Sara with perfect, unconcerned confidence. Like she’s already worked it out in her head, like it’s as simple as adding a third chair to the folding card table at the cabin. Jim’s not sure why he suddenly feels like his chest is caving in.

“I dunno, kid,” he manages, after a moment, putting a hand on Joyce’s shoulder and giving it a gentle squeeze. He can’t see her face, but he thinks maybe that’s a good thing, if he’s going to keep it together. And he’s sure she won’t object to a little bit of comfort, right now. “This might be too big for Sara to help with. But. Thanks.”

He risks a glance up at Jonathan, sure that the boy’s going to be on the verge of absolute collapse. But to Jim’s surprise, Jonathan’s just frowning at Sara. Who looks almost as confused as Jonathan does.

“Sorry,” she says, to Joyce. “But everybody’s talking like you’re dying. And – you’re not.”

In the endless second of silence that follows those three words, Joyce’s hand rises, trembling, and closes like a vice over Jim’s.

Jim barely manages to swallow the flash of anger that flares hot and sharp and bitter in his shattered chest. Sara’s trying to help, he knows that, but he wishes people would stop trying to tell him that things are all going to be okay -

But. “Joyce,” he says, low and insistent, as the realisation slowly takes shape inside him. “She knows. She can tell. Right?” he asks Sara, who nods. “Remember, I told you, about how, when she was little -”

“Mr. White,” Sara interrupts, with a tiny shake of her head. “He was so sick. I’d almost forgotten about that. Mom told me I must have imagined it.”

“She still would,” Jim mutters, answering the unasked question. They haven’t talked about it yet, have barely brushed up against the topic of Diane and where she is and why. It’ll be a more serious conversation. For just Jim and Sara. Later. “Joyce?”

Joyce has barely moved a muscle. Jim can feel the tension in her shoulders under his fingers. “You – really mean it? I’m not dying?”

Sara wrinkles her snub nose. “As far as I can tell, you’re not even sick. Might want to ease off on the cigarettes, though.”

“I’ve been trying to cut back,” Joyce says. She sounds faint. If she wasn’t already sitting, Jim would’ve made her sit down. “I’m really not going to die?”

There’s something sharp in it when Sara says, “Everybody’s going to die. But you probably won’t any time soon.”

The results from the doctors’ appointments – which take place the following day and the next, Jim’s grudgingly impressed despite himself – don’t come up with anything to say otherwise, either.

“I think you’re on the right track,” the doc says, when they finally get to meet with him, to discuss what his bosses want with Will. Whoever they’ve got on cleanup at the lab must have been at work on Owens, too, because it’s barely been two weeks since the monsters shredded both, but they both seem almost back to normal. There are still boards covering some of the windows and scorch marks on the lino of the lobby, and the doc’s still walking with a cane, but it doesn’t seem to be stopping either of them from being a pain in the ass. “Like I told the cowboy here, for all of these kids to have psychic abilities, it either has to run in families or be caused by something you’ve all been exposed to. Sounds like maybe it was a little bit of both. I never considered subject 003, myself, but they would’ve had to get it down here somehow, and the only roads do go straight through town.”

Joyce gives her head a shake, a frustrated frown creasing her features. “Wait, wait – so you, you think – that baby’s the reason Jonathan has powers? But, then -”

“No,” Owens says, folding his hands and leaning forward against his desk. “I think you are the reason Jonathan has powers. And the reason Will has powers. And ‘that baby’ might be the reason you had the genetic mutation that’s responsible for those powers, to pass on to them both.” He sits back in his office chair, giving Joyce a long look. “From what I know, what I’ve seen, I think – and this is an educated guess, so don’t quote me – that something, probably that near-death experience in the tunnels, switched that mutation ‘on’ for you. The same way it was ‘on’ for both your boys when they were born.”

“You mean -?”

“I mean,” the doc says, not unkindly, “the best explanation for your whole family is if you had the potential to develop these abilities the whole time. All it took was just the right trigger.”

Jim worries his thumbnail between two fingers, and tries not to think about Terry Ives, sitting at his kitchen table, spilling out some crazy story about facedown cards and sensory deprivation and LSD and the voices of people who weren’t there. He’s kind of grateful Jonathan isn’t here.

Joyce darts a confused look in Bob’s direction, giving his hand in her lap a quick squeeze. “I – I guess that makes sense. But then, if it was because of, of that baby -”

“Then that exposure would have been nearly eighteen years ago, now,” Owens says. “And it couldn’t have been any too close or for too long. Your blood tests, your scans, everything looks clean right now. And from what it says in our records, it didn’t take too long after an exposure to subject 003 for any…problems…to show up.”

Joyce shudders. This time, it’s Bob’s turn to give her hand a squeeze.

“Wait, so,” he says, sounding just a little too thoughtful. “Your theory is that Joyce was exposed to this – subject of yours while it was being transported through town? And that’s why she and both her kids – and probably so many of the other kids around here, too - have psychic powers?”

“Something like that,” Owens agrees. “I’d have to double-check some dates, but even if a few of those older kids had a direct exposure, too -”

“So,” Bob interrupts him, a slow smile starting to spread across his face, “anybody who was in town around that time could have been exposed?”

Jim has to shut his eyes for a second, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Don’t get your hopes up.”

“Oh, my -” Joyce starts, sounding both startled and, just a little, like she’s trying not to laugh. “Does that mean – Karen -?”

Owens gives an expansive shrug. “It’s a theory.”

Jim hangs back as Joyce and Bob make their way out of the office, her practically plastered to his side, apparently weak with relief, him apparently still riding high on the possibility of his very own radioactive spider bite. It’s almost painful to watch their shared happiness.

And besides. Jim’s got some business to attend to. “Thanks for making this happen so fast, doc. About that other little favour -”

Owens cuts him off, with a wary glance around his office. “Not here.”

He nods toward the door. And then adds, when Jim doesn’t seem to be moving fast enough for him, “I’m working on it. You’ll hear from me.”

It’s almost another two weeks before Jim does. Cutting it a little fine, but thankfully, still under the wire. He’s not entirely sure, as he slides into the booth at the back of the Hideaway, what all the cloak and dagger shit’s about. Owens wasn’t this cagey last year. But if it’s keeping the girls safe, Jim’s not exactly about to complain.

The envelope the good doctor slides across the table has papers inside. Jim pulls out, and gets stuck on, the birth certificate for – Jane Eleanor Hopper.

“You understand, of course,” Owens says, almost like he’s trying to be gentle, but it startles Jim all the same. He’s not sure how much time has passed. He’d just assumed it’d be in the name ‘Eleanor Frazier’ – “It’d raise eyebrows if I tried to bring ‘Sara Hopper’ back to life.”

Jim gives him the blank look that that statement deserves. Owens just grins at him, real smug, and gestures towards the envelope still in Jim’s hands.

Jim flips to the next page, and nearly groans out loud when he sees what the doc’s done. “This? This is not funny,” he says, into the teeth of Owens’ grin.

Still. It’s not like he can’t see the appropriateness of it. The irony of it.

According to the birth certificates, they’re sisters. Half-sisters, at least.

Jane Eleanor Hopper and Sara Grace Ives.

…

The light in Becky Ives’ kitchen flickers, once.

Becky barely even notices. It’s an old house. The lights do that, sometimes. Just like the one in the hall by the door is doing now.

It’s only when the doorbell chimes that she looks up.

She doesn’t recognise the people she can see on the porch through the sliver she pulls the door open. A big man, a nervous-looking woman, and a child. A girl whose eyes find Becky’s and hold them, with a stare far too old and solemn for her apparent age.

“Hi,” the man says, and Becky’s surprised by the gentleness of it. Something about him had her expecting gruff, and it’s there, but nowhere near as strong as she would’ve thought. “Becky Ives? Jim Hopper. We spoke on the phone.”

“Yeah,” Becky says, pulling the door open a little wider. “Yeah, course. You said you might come by. Dunno if Terry will remember you, though. Dunno how much she even notices, these days,” she adds, a little quieter, and then curses herself for whining in front of these near-strangers. “Who’re your friends?”

Jim Hopper looks behind him, like he hadn’t realised the other two were even there. “Oh. Uh, this is Joyce -” The nervous-looking woman offers a nervous-looking smile. “And, uh…?”

Before Becky can comment on why Terry’s visitor would be travelling with a child whose name he doesn’t know, the girl says, without ever taking her eyes from Becky’s face, “Jane.”

Becky damn near slams the door in their faces.

She tries to, actually. For some reason, the stupid thing sticks, refusing to budge no matter how Becky puts her weight against it.

“Whatever – this – is,” she says, impressed by how even she manages to keep her voice, “you can pack it up and haul it right back off my porch. Terry and me, we don’t have any money, and she’s been hurt enough already for one lifetime, so just – just leave us alone -”

Whatever else Becky Ives might have said, it dies in her throat as the door wrenches itself out of her hands and slams all the way open, bouncing off the wall behind it. The hall light and the porch light both buzz and flicker crazily overhead as –

As she feels her feet leave the floor.

Becky flails. But all she touches is thin air. And she finds her gaze drawn, inexorably, back to that girl, that stare, the stare that feels like it’s holding her pinned in midair –

The girl shifts her gaze to her right.

Becky, with no input of her own, drifts to her left, colliding gently with the wall before her feet bump back against the floor. She nearly collapses bodily onto it, her knees refusing to hold her up. All the starch seems to have gone out of her.

The girl spares her an apologetic glance, before marching determinedly past her, into the house, wiping a bloody nose off on the sleeve of her oversized flannel as she goes. Becky doesn’t even try to stop her. Doesn’t think she could.

Somewhere in the stunned depths of her mind, she notices that the lights have stopped flickering.

Becky’s had to clean up bloody noses for Terry, too. She’s never thought anything of it. Just one more bodily fluid, just one more little thoughtless thing that her sister can’t do for herself anymore.

Just like Becky’s never thought anything of the flickering lights. After all, it’s an old house.

“Didn’t know she was gonna do that,” Jim Hopper says, and Becky starts, clapping a hand against her chest to try to slow the frantic racing of her heart. “Are you -”

Becky waves him off with a nod. She’s not hurt. Just shaken. Badly shaken.

Terry was right.

Jesus Christ and all the saints. Terry was right.

Jim Hopper gives Becky a grim little smile, and a clap on the shoulder, like he’s been there. But he’s looking down the hall. “Better late than never, right?”

Before Becky can try to make sense of that, he’s heading after the girl, toward the living room.

The cheesy music and canned laughter of a game show, spilling down the hall, suddenly fuzzes out into a blare of static. It’s almost loud enough to drown out the small voice, the voice Becky’s only heard speak one other word, sounding terribly hopeful, terribly afraid.

“Mama?”

A hand taps Becky’s shoulder, and she jumps again. But it’s just the woman with the nervous-looking smile.

“Hi. Joyce,” she says, with a gesture toward herself, like Becky might have forgotten her name in the five minutes since they were introduced. It’s thoughtful of her. Becky had. “Do you – you look like you could use a cigarette.”

…

“I think it goes without saying that we have a problem here.”

Sam Owens has spent his entire career working for the government. He’s developed, over the years, a strategy for dealing with anyone with a title or a clipboard. The trick is not to show weakness. And never to blink first. “Does it?”

The very important suit who’s been sent to chastise him stops mid-pace to fix Sam with a long, unimpressed stare. “People are dead, Owens. Thirty-seven dead or seriously injured. On your watch.”

“In a freak incident. That was a known potential hazard of working at this site. Not one we could do much about, either,” Sam counters, as levelly as he can. “And, in case I have to remind you, I was one of those thirty-seven? I would never ask my people to walk into something I wasn’t ready to walk into myself.”

That, obviously, judging by the frown he gets in response, touches a nerve. Sam has to fight down the urge to smile.

“It’s why this was a known potential hazard that’s the problem,” the suit says, at last, apparently choosing not to address that. “It’s my understanding that you’ve chosen an…arm’s-length approach to monitoring the situation here in Hawkins.”

Sam shrugs. “It’s worked well for me so far.”

The suit gives him another long, unimpressed stare, before turning it down onto the nameplate set at the edge of his desk. “Has it? I have reports from the local newsmedia about unexplained power outages, freak lightning strikes, mysterious ‘incidents’ here at the facility, disappearances, helicopter crashes -”

“Hey, those last two weren’t me,” Sam says.

The suit manages, somehow, to look even less impressed.

“Let me put it to you plain, Sam,” he says, unclasping his hands from behind his back and leaning against the desk. Sam thinks it’s meant to make him look easier, more casual, friendlier, like they’re both on the same side. What it mostly makes him look is stiff and uncomfortable. “These kids? They’re a menace. Bunch of ticking time bombs. You can’t go, what, six months without one of them blowing up a street? Or punching a hole in reality that bleeds man-eating monsters every so often? They’re dangerous. And getting more so the more powerful they get.”

“You make it sound like they’re some kind of comic book supervillains,” Sam says. It sounds like a joke. It isn’t really.

The suit’s voice goes low and horribly jovial as he says, “No, of course they aren’t. But do you really want to leave the power to level a city block without blinking in the hands of an uncontrolled thirteen-year-old girl?” He actually tries for a chuckle. It’s the worst imitation of a friendly sound Sam’s heard in a long time. “Do you really want to be responsible for what happens to this town the first time she gets dumped? I don’t know if you read much Stephen King…”

“I caught your drift,” Sam says, flat. “Thanks.”

The suit shrugs, like it’s no skin off his nose, and picks up the nameplate on Sam’s desk. “Just a little food for thought. It sounds like there’s…a personal interest, from somewhere higher up. We’ve had two major incidents here in the last two years. Those kids keep getting more powerful, more unpredictable, and more obvious. And if you can’t keep a bunch of kids in line…”

He shoots a small, self-satisfied sliver of a smile in Sam’s direction. It’s the first time since he stepped out of his sleek black car outside the doors that one of his smiles has looked real. “Well. I’m sure we can find ourselves somebody who can.”

“If that’s what you feel you need to do,” Sam says, careful to keep his voice in check. “In the meantime, I’m going to go on trying to keep any more good people from getting massacred by monsters, or angry psychic captives, or mobs of locals turning up with torches and pitchforks. But if you think you can do a better job threading the needle out here -”

“Oh, don’t worry, Sam,” the suit says, still with that horrible aren’t-we-all-friends-here tone, that grim smug sliver of smirk. “You won’t have to deal with things alone out here anymore. Washington’s going to be keeping a very close eye on the Hawkins lab.”

He drops the nameplate back onto Sam’s desk, like it’s an afterthought, before he starts toward the door.

The nameplate lands facedown.

And, as soon as it hits the surface of the desk, bursts into a wispy puff of colour. The desk follows it, a moment later, and the deskchair, the certificates on the walls and then the walls themselves.

In seconds, the suit and the doctor stand alone in a vast, echoing darkness.

“Катя.”

The girl observing silently in the dark raises her head at the sound of a voice, distant yet somehow close, muffled and overloud like listening in a dream to someone speaking in the waking world. Her eyes dart around the endless emptiness of the void.

But of course, there is no one else there.

“Катя. Вернись.”

The girl takes a breath, and shuts her eyes.

And the suit and the doctor both dissolve away into nothing, too, as the darkness of the void fades back to only the darkness within her own head.

…

“Okay. Now you can look.”

El opens her eyes.

At first, she almost can’t tell the face in the mirror Nancy’s holding up is her. The pink stuff Nancy brushed around her eyes makes them look big and soft, the sticky stuff on her lips sparkles, and the headband with the little bow makes her curls look like they’re on purpose. With the dress Joyce helped her make, the one she’s been working on for the last month, that’s hers and only hers, she looks – she feels…

“What do you think?” Nancy asks, giving the mirror a little waggle, and El smiles up at her.

“Pretty.”

Nancy smiles, too, like she does when she wins at a board game. She tucks the mirror back into the bag she took her makeup out of, and starts packing up the little boxes and bottles spread out across Will’s desk. “Good. Do you want to ride with us? We’ve got to be there early, Jonathan’s taking photos -”

“I know,” El says, and slips off the edge of the bed.

There’s music playing, down the hall, from the living room. El can hear Jonathan laughing, Joyce protesting, Will complaining about Jonathan laughing and trying not to laugh himself. When El steps into the room, she can see why. Joyce is dancing Will, in his vest and tie, around the living room, while Will protests with a big smile on his face, “Do people even dance like this anymore?”

“Of course they do. It’s all the rage,” Joyce says, like she’s trying to be serious, and then catches sight of El and swirls them both to a stop. “Oh, honey! Oh, look at you!”

“Good?” El asks, suddenly nervous, suddenly not sure of what the mirror told her. But everybody’s smiling, and the boyfriend – Bob – swings the camera on his shoulder around to look at her. El doesn’t think she likes that. But he doesn’t ask her to do anything, not like Papa or his not-really-friends. Still, she watches the red light beside the camera’s black eye carefully.

“So good, sweetheart, look at how well that turned out!” Joyce says, coming over to give El’s sleeves and skirt little tugs, smiling big. “That was a lot of hard work, I’m so proud of you. Is this what you hoped it would look like?”

El nods, and then checks she hasn’t messed up her headband.

“Come on, give us a twirl,” Bob says, and Joyce looks up, frowning at the camera.

“Oh – Bob, I – I don’t know if that’s such a good idea…”

“Nobody outside of our family’s going to see these videos, are they?” Bob says, and Joyce’s face does something El doesn’t know the right words to describe. “Besides. It’s El’s first school dance! We’re going to want to remember this. Right?” he asks El, who thinks about that, and nods, again.

“I still think your friend Max had the right idea,” Sara says, from the couch, putting down her book. “You should show up covered in fake blood and turn on all the sprinklers.” But she’s smiling, too. “But you look so nice, I’m sure everybody will be looking at you anyway.”

“Fake blood is a great idea. For next Halloween,” Nancy says firmly, giving El a little push in the middle of her back so she steps forward, out of the doorway. “You’re sure you don’t want to come with us? The school’s always looking for volunteers…”

“For a middle school dance? I think I’m going to stick to keeping a low profile, thanks,” Sara says, giving her book a little wave. “But I wasn’t going to miss seeing Jane off. For her first school dance.”

El smiles back at her, and does a spin, showing off her dress. Her skirt flutters out around her with a swishing sound and a ruffle of air, and she laughs in surprise. And spins around again, two more times, just to make it flutter out more.

When she stops, it’s with a wobble, the living room wheeling and skidding around her. Will catches her arm before she trips, though.

“Was Steve coming over?” Jonathan asks Nancy, and she shakes her head.

“He said he was going to meet us there. He’s giving Dustin a ride.”

“Oh, boy,” Will mutters, nudging El with his elbow. “Wanna bet on how tall Dustin’s hair is gonna be this time?”

El has to bite down on her bottom lip to keep her laugh from coming out as any more than a snort. She feels a little mean, wearing makeup and a headband and laughing about Dustin’s hair. But…some of the things he’s done to it since he started hanging out with Steve more…

“If we’re not waiting for Steve, I think we’re just about ready to get out of here,” Jonathan says. “There’s just one more thing -”

He stops, raising his head, at the sound of a rumble out in the driveway. El recognises the sound of Hopper’s truck before it cuts out, before the heavy knock at the door.

Sara gets up from the couch and comes over to El as Bob’s letting Hop inside, Hop reeling back from the video camera in his face. “Jane? I don’t know how you feel about this, whether you want -” She stops, giving her head a little shake, and then pulls a fat silver bangle with a blue stone in it off her own wrist. “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to. I just thought maybe, for tonight…”

El holds her hand out, and Sara slips the bangle over it. She pushes it up, a little, so it sticks in place just above El’s wrist.

El twists her hand back and forth, looking at the way the silver glints in the light. No matter how she turns her arm, the thick, flat metal covers up her number completely.

There’s something hard stuck in El’s throat.

She looks up at Sara, but Sara’s looking at the bangle. She pushes her blonde hair back behind her ear, before flashing El a smile. “You can keep it. If you want.”

“Thanks,” El says. It comes out whispery and dry.

But she pushes the bangle back down on her wrist, so her number peeks out the edge. Just a little.

Sara’s smile wobbles. She puts one arm around El’s shoulders and pulls her in tight against her side, holding El just a little too tight for a long second before she gives El’s hair a ruffle with her other hand and lets go. El wrinkles up her nose, fixing her headband back in place, and Sara grins at her, big and white, before tucking one of El’s curls back out of her face.

“Jonathan, you’ve got to get going,” Joyce is saying, but Jonathan shakes his head, waving her toward the wall between them and the dining room.

“Just one picture first, Mom. Will?”

“Let me,” Nancy says, reaching for the camera Jonathan’s raising to his eye. “You get in the shot.”

“What? No, Nancy, that wasn’t what I -”

“Oh, that’s a great idea,” Joyce says, interrupting him. “Will? Honey, come here, we’ll get a family photo all together.”

“Mom,” Jonathan protests, but Nancy’s already taking the camera out of his hands.

And Joyce is ignoring him, gripping Will’s shoulder with one hand as she waves at Bob with the other. “Bob, you too. Put the camera down for a minute.”

Bob pauses, pointing at himself with the hand that’s not balancing the black eye of the camera on his shoulder. Joyce nods, and waves him toward them again. “You’re part of this family, aren’t you? Get in here!”

Nancy takes two pictures of the four of them, the bright light on the top of the camera – the flash – popping. El thinks one of those pictures has Joyce brushing Jonathan’s bangs out of his eyes in it. “Mom, I don’t have time for a haircut, Nancy and I have to get to the school,” Jonathan complains, grabbing his mom’s hand to keep her from touching his bangs some more and turning a crooked smile at the camera just before the flash pops the second time.

“They’re just a little overgrown, honey, it’d only take me a second. And Will, that tie is not straight -”

“You’ve got time for one more picture, though, don’t you?” Will asks Jonathan, before turning to look right at El. “We should have one with El in it.”

El starts to join them in front of the wall, but stops halfway there. “Sara too?”

“What?” El isn’t sure why Sara sounds so surprised. “No, I’m not part of -”

“Thought you kids were gonna be late?” Hop grumbles at Jonathan, who gives him a look.

“You could get in the shot, too. I know my mom won’t mind.”

“Jonathan!” Joyce says, all sharp like Jonathan said something wrong, at the same time as Hop starts talking again.

“Whoa, no. I’m just making sure the girls get where they’re going safe -”

“You’re my sister,” El says, holding out her hand to Sara, before she looks around at Hop, and Joyce, and Jonathan, and Bob. And Will. “My family.”

In the silence that follows, Nancy says, peeking up over the top of Jonathan’s camera, “Could you all get just a little bit closer? I’m having trouble fitting everybody in frame.”

El squeezes in so her shoulder is pressed against Will’s, and looks at the camera’s black eye, and smiles.

And waits for the flash.

…

The school looks a lot bigger, from the parking lot, than El thought it would. The red brick walls of the gym loom over them in the dark.

“You scared?” Hop asks, reaching over to put his hand over El’s, and she nods. She is. But – something else, too. Something that flutters in her stomach and buzzes in her veins and makes her want to tap her fingers and her feet. Fidget the way Papa always told her not to.

“I still want to,” she says, and Hop sighs, shaking his head with a smile.

“You’re sure you don’t wanna come back home with me and Sara and pig out in front of the TV all night?”

“Speak for yourself,” Sara says. “I cannot watch another single second of Bonanza.”

“No,” El says, unbuckling her seatbelt. “I want to go.”

Hop smiles at her, soft. “Well, then. Guess you better get in there before it’s over.”

He walks with her to the doors, though.

El steps into the gym, and almost wants to turn around and walk right back out again. It’s so much. The muffled throb she could hear in the parking lot turns into a blast of music as soon as she opens the door, too loud, and people – strangers – are turning to look at her. She nearly does turn right back around and run back to the truck when a strange man with a dark moustache and a sweater that has no sleeves on it smiles and says, “Hi there! Don’t think I’ve seen you roaming the hallways before…?”

El nearly turns around and runs back to the truck. But then, someone walks through the hanging paper strips coming down off the archway in front of her. And she sees, for a second before the paper flutters back into place. On the other side, a face – faces – she knows.

El takes a breath, ignoring the strangers, and walks through the paper curtain.

And out into the biggest room she’s ever seen.

El’s never been anywhere like it. She doesn’t know a big enough word for how big it is. She thinks maybe she could fit the whole cabin inside, roof and all, and it wouldn’t even touch anywhere but the floor. Every inch of the room is covered in coloured paper or twinkling lights or glitter, and the music booms over everything.

And everywhere she looks, it’s full of people. Not bad men in white coats or dark suits, either. This room is full of beautiful, glittering strangers, dressed up in so many different colours and patterns that it almost makes her eyes hurt, swaying together in twos or clumped in little knots on the floor, or hanging around the walls, or sitting on the giant-sized stairs that go nowhere that are lining the sides of the big room. This room is full of kids like her.

A few of them turn to look, as El pushes through the paper curtain, but they quickly lose interest and look away again. And most of them don’t even notice her.

But five of them, standing close to the edge of the floor to her right, do.

Max is the first to break away from the group and run over, with an excited shout of, “El!” It almost gets swallowed up in the music and the noise of people talking all around them. “Wow, you look incredible! Where’d you find that dress?”

“I made it,” El admits, suddenly shy, a little scared to raise her voice in case more of the people look at her.

Max, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to care if people look at her. “You made this?”

“Joyce helped,” El says, twisting her new bangle around on her wrist.

“That’s so cool,” Max says, taking both El’s hands in hers and pulling El toward the boys. “I tried making a blouse once. The Home Ec teacher used mine as an example of what not to do. Did you guys know El made her own dress?” she demands of the boys.

“I did,” Will says, catching El’s eye and bobbing his head, and his eyebrows, just slightly, in Dustin’s direction. El presses her lips hard together so she doesn’t laugh. This is the tallest she’s ever seen Dustin’s hair.

“And may I say she looks most ravishing in it?” Dustin says, in a fake-deep voice, holding out a hand to El, who adds ravishing to her list of words to look up the next time she has her dictionary. “Care to dance, milady?”

Lucas elbows him. Dustin frowns at him. “What?”

Lucas nods toward Mike.

El only sort-of notices Dustin’s protest, in his normal voice, that El’s his friend, can’t he dance with his friends? She only sort-of notices Will rolling his eyes and announcing he’s going to get some punch, Max agreeing that that’s a good idea and she’s going too, but Lucas better save her a slow dance. El only sort-of notices the squinched-up looks Dustin and Lucas give each other when Max suggests they could always dance with each other while she’s gone.

Mike’s looking at El, with his eyes all big. And he hasn’t said a word.

“Mike?” El asks, at last, and Mike gives himself a little shake, like she woke him up from a nap he took on the couch without realising it.

“You look…” Mike stops, and swallows hard. The muscles in his throat go up and down. He doesn’t take his eyes off El. “Wow.”

“Pretty?” El asks, nervous all over again for reasons she can’t explain.

Mike nods, and nods, and nods some more. “Really pretty. I mean – that dress. You did a really great job. And – wow, your hair…” He stops nodding, finally, and brushes the palms of his hands against the legs of his stiff-looking black pants for some reason. “Would you – do you maybe want to dance?”

El does. Maybe more than anything, right now. But – “I don’t know how.”

“Oh, that’s okay,” Mike says. “Nobody does. Here, it’s easy, just – just put your arms up, over my shoulders, like this…”

El follows Mike’s directions. And, in a minute or so, they’re swaying back and forth like the other couples on the floor, her arms around his neck, his hands on her waist. Maybe she’s just gotten used to the music, maybe it’s because they’re swaying along, but the music feels less like it’s blasting at her and more like it’s wrapping itself around her, rising up through her feet. And nobody is telling her to sit still, Eleven, and focus when she listens to it and moves.

Mike’s hands are a little too hot and kind of sweaty on her waist. But his eyes are still so big every time he looks at her. And the happy bleeding off him is so warm, in the twinkling lights, he almost seems to glow.

El doesn’t know if anybody else is looking at her, at them. Right now, she doesn’t really care.

And nothing is wrong.

At least for a little while.