Chapter Text
He had a life before. Or, technically after, years and years from now.
However he chooses to see it, the facts are the same. He had a name. Parents. Something like friends, too, if he counts the people in his training sector whom he shared bunks with, ate meals with, and ran through simulations with until his head ached and his mouth tasted like iron.
He has known all his life not to get attached, because inevitably he was going to be sent back to when it all began; 1980’s Hawkins, Indiana. He is well aware that his actions in this timeline may very likely result in him never existing at all. All Travelers know that, it’s in their oath. He signed up for this. His parents were scientists, but he wanted to be a soldier. When they went through one of the open gates and didn’t come back out, he knew what needed to be done.
Traveler 3512 went from being a person to a number. Now, he is somehow both less and more than that. He is a fighter in this war against the Upside Down. He is Steve Harrington.
Becoming Steve Harrington is the easy part. He keeps up with school work but doesn’t try too hard because Steve is historically a below average student. He takes the kids to the arcade, to the Wheeler house, and wherever else they beg him to drive them. He tries Twinkies for the first time. He learns Steve’s haircare routine. He gets used to waking up to blue skies, not the perpetually burning, ember-orange tinted one of his childhood.
He maintains his relationships. Nancy and Jonathan avoid him when they can and walk on eggshells around him when they can’t; the breakup works in his favor to excuse his otherwise sudden aloofness towards them. The kids all share this sort of hero worship for him that has them seeing past any odd quirks he might not have had six months ago. He doesn’t have to worry about faking it too hard around any of his classmates, either, since he’d already long retired the King Steve persona. Billy Hargrove avoids him like the plague, however begrudgingly. As for Steve’s parents (his parents, there’s no going back now), they are rarely home. When they are home, if they notice something is different about him compared to Steve from Before, they don’t care enough to bring it up.
As mundane the life of Steve Harrington is, it is still all part of the mission.
Protocol 5: In the absence of direction, maintain your host’s life.
So Steve settles into his reality and stays ready for further instructions.
It’s the waiting that’s hardest. Months of radio silence from The Director, and no updates on the arrival of his team. He knows he isn’t the only traveler in town, but he can’t risk protocol six and confront anyone he suspects. After living a life in the program where every decision was driven by strict routine and discipline, then jumping head first into the chaos and excitement of a mission, the aftermath is jarring. Sleepy little Hawkins, Indiana is a sight for sore eyes. It feels wrong, and it leaves him chasing sleep for many nights during those first few weeks. Of course, he was trained for this part, too. His instructors in the program called it Culture Shock.
Eventually that also fades with the turn of the new year. While he never forgets his mission, it does become easier to put it in the back of his mind. That is until the summer of 1985.
Working at Starcourt Mall while knowing its fate is surreal. He knows exactly what is brewing beneath his feet day in and day out. The power and destruction that the Soviets foolishly think they have a handle on. There is a future in which the mall swallows up half the town. In which it becomes a sink hole that harbors monsters and unfathomable horrors.
He knows that the events leading up to that disaster have already been altered, but that doesn’t mean the risk has been diminished. He is here to ensure that that future never comes to be, and that’s why he puts up with the mundanity of giving entitled middle schoolers ice cream samples and rattling off the ridiculously complicated flavor of the day. It’s why he doesn’t complain when his coworker Robin calls in sick one day in July and he has to run the whole shop by himself, including closing duties.
He’s dumping the filthy mop water down the drain in the back room when the little bell at the ice cream counter chimes.
He stops mid-pour, listening. The mall has been closed for twenty minutes, and he stopped serving customers ten minutes before that. No one should be in the building except other employees closing their respective stores. The bell chimes again, two times in succession.
Steve dumps the rest of the water and puts down the bucket, wiping his wet hands on his Scoops Ahoy uniform shirt. When he pushes open the swinging doors leading to the front of the house, there’s a girl standing at the counter. She’s got pigtails, and a pink backpack slung over her shoulder. Even though she is cast half in shadow from the switched-off house lights, Erica Sinclair is instantly recognizable. Steve’s trepidation is immediately replaced with irritation and he puts his hands on his hips.
“Listen up, Little Sinclair, mall’s closed. No more samples, come back tomorrow.”
Erica turns to face him slowly, robotically, and that’s when he notices she is missing her usual ten-year-old attitude. She stands straight, her expression smooth, eyes near blank. When she speaks, her voice is measured, words coming out mechanical. “Traveler 3512, support required. Coordinates: forty-one degrees, thirty-nine minutes North, eighty-seven degrees, twenty-seven minutes West. Subject name: B. Hargrove. End of Message.”
A chill tickles up his spine at the instructions. An official order from The Director, the first one in months, and it’s being delivered to him by Lucas’ bratty little sister. Before his eyes, Erica comes back to herself, shaking off the control of the transmission. She blinks and her expression twists up into her usual displeased demeanor.
“Why are you looking at me like that? And how the hell did I get back here?” Erica asks.
If Steve has to hazard a guess, she was one of the stragglers who spent as much time at the mall during the summer as possible, and when the transmission came in she was the closest one in her group of friends to the building. He knows that the transmissions are sent through children because their bodies are better equipped to deal with data from the future, something about disrupting brainwaves and elasticity that adults do not have the capacity to handle. He doesn’t know the exact science of all the technology they use in the program, he is after all just a soldier.
Steve masks his initial shock and crosses his arms over his chest. He’s got to get Erica out of here and get to those coordinates ASAP. “I was about to ask you the same thing. The customer might always be right during operating hours but right now you’re trespassing. So unless you want to be banned for life you’ve gotta go.”
“Banned for life? I don’t even know what’s going on!” Erica argues, and he would feel a little bad about lying to her if not for the way she had been smugly abusing the ice cream sample policy all summer.
“Yeah, yeah, save it for mall security, come on.” He ushers her out of the shop and follows, locks the door behind them even though he still hasn’t finished closing up. The store manager won’t be in tomorrow so the only person he’s likely to hear complaints from about it is Robin, which is inevitable regardless.
He escorts Erica out of the mall and watches her bike turn out of the parking lot, then takes out the map from his car’s glove box. He has to turn on the light under the rearview mirror to read it, because it’s pitch black outside even though the sweltering heat of Indiana summer doesn’t rest even when the sun goes down. The coordinates 41° 39’ N, 87° 27’ W lead to Brimborn Steel Works. He isn’t the Historian of his team, but that name sends another chill down his spine even if he can’t remember the exact details of why. All he knows as he reverses out of the employee parking lot is that something sinister awaits him there.
It’s a good thing that Steve Harrington from Before decided to always keep his nailbat in the trunk of his car.