Chapter Text
The wedding took place in a small wooden chapel filled with the scent of wildflowers.
The Wheeler family took up the entire front row on the groom’s side. Karen Wheeler was a wreck of happy tears, clutching a handful of tissues and sobbing quietly into her husband’s shoulder. Ted Wheeler sat beside her, looking mildly confused by the level of emotion but occasionally patting her arm and muttering, “There, there, Karen. It’s a nice ceremony.”
Nancy stood near the altar as a bridesmaid, beaming, while Holly Wheeler—now much older—sat with her friends, whispering excitedly.
When Jane walked down the aisle, the room held its breath. She wore white, simple and elegant. Hopper walked her down the aisle, his face a mask of intense concentration to avoid crying. When he handed her hand to Mike, he didn’t threaten him. He just nodded, a silent passing of the torch.
The reception was a blur of joy. Murray Bauman was shockingly good at dancing, spinning a terrified Joyce around the floor while Hopper sat at a table, drinking a beer and refusing to make eye contact with them. Dustin gave a toast that started heartfelt, detoured into a rant about physics, and ended with everyone cheering anyway.
Jane sat at the head table, looking out at the room. She saw Max laughing with Lucas, Will sketching on a napkin, Steve trying to explain hair care to a skeptical uncle. She saw her family.
Years Later…
The backyard of the Hopper home was noisy. It was a Sunday barbecue, and the air smelled of charcoal and sunscreen.
“Uncle Steve! Uncle Steve!”
Two small children chased Steve Harrington across the lawn. Steve, despite being in his thirties and complaining about his back, was running at full speed, pretending to be a monster.
“I’m gonna get you!” Steve roared, scooping one of them up.
“Put him down, you giant man-child!” Robin shouted from the patio, where she was helping Joyce slice watermelon.
“Never!” Steve yelled back.
Nancy sat in a lawn chair, sipping lemonade and laughing at the scene. Jonathan sat on the grass nearby, adjusting his camera lens to capture the chaos. They weren’t together anymore—life had taken them down different roads years ago—but the easy comfort between them remained. They were friends bound by history, the kind of bond that breakups couldn’t sever.
Dustin was by the grill, arguing with Hopper about the correct temperature for burgers.
“It needs to be medium-rare, Hopper, it’s about flavor profiles!”
“It needs to be cooked so we don’t die, Henderson. Step away from the tongs.”
Hopper finally shooed Dustin away and wiped his hands on a towel. He looked up and saw Jane standing by the porch railing, watching her children squeal as Steve spun them around. He walked over, leaning against the railing beside her.
They stood in silence for a moment, just listening to the laughter.
“You remember?” Hopper asked suddenly, his voice gruff but low.
Jane turned to him. “Remember what?”
“What I told you. Back when everything was… well, when it was bad. I told you to grow up. To find a good man. To have some rugrats of your own.” He gestured vaguely toward the lawn with his beer bottle. “I told you to give them the childhood you didn’t get to have.”
Jane looked back at her daughter, who was currently trying to put a flower behind Lucas’s ear while Max laughed. Her chest tightened, not with pain, but with the overwhelming fullness of it.
“I remember,” she whispered.
Hopper nudged her shoulder with his. “Well,” he said, clearing his throat to hide the crack in his voice. “You did good, kid. You really did.”
Jane smiled, leaning her head on his shoulder. “I had a good teacher,” she said softly. “He taught me how to be a dad.”
Hopper let out a shaky breath, blinking rapidly at the sunset. “Yeah, well. Don’t tell Joyce I got misty, or she’ll never let me live it down.”
He gave her one last squeeze, then pushed off the railing.
“Alright, I gotta save those burgers before Henderson ruins them with his ‘science’.”
He walked back to the grill, leaving Jane smiling in the fading light.
A few minutes later, Mike came up the steps and sat down beside her, their shoulders touching comfortably.
“Thinking?” he asked softly.
She smiled, leaning into him. “Remembering.”
“Remembering what?”
“The woods,” she said quietly. “The rain. The first time you found me.”
Mike laughed a little, a sound rich with memory. “You were soaked. And terrified. And you barely knew how to say ‘no’.”
“I was scared,” she admitted. “I thought the world was just… bad places and bad men.”
“It was, for a while,” Mike said. He took her hand, intertwining their fingers. “Everything felt wrong back then. Like the whole world was tilted on its axis. Distorted. Dark.”
“Upside down,” she whispered.
“Yeah,” Mike agreed. He looked out at the yard—at his sister laughing with Jonathan, at his friends who had become family, at Hopper grumpily serving burgers to a cheering Dustin. “But look at this.”
Jane followed his gaze. She saw safety. She saw love. She saw a future that belonged to them.
“We aren’t running anymore,” Mike said softly.
Jane squeezed his hand, her heart feeling fuller than she ever thought possible. “No,” she said, a smile breaking across her face. “We finally made it.”
“To where?” Mike asked, though he already knew.
She looked at him, her eyes bright and clear.
“To the right side up.”
Jane took her daughter’s hand as the little girl ran up to the porch. She stood up, pulling Mike with her, and walked into the crowd, into the laughter, into the life she had chosen.
The End.