Chapter Text
The way his eyes follow her across the room should be comforting, but it’s not. Mornings are for coffee and contemplation, Hopper says, but the mug goes cold and he sits, fiddling with the threads on the arm of the chair and stares at a blank TV screen until Joyce puts a hand on his shoulder and says: “How about we go for a walk?”
He looks up at her and there’s no trace of the strong, fierce, brave man that lurked behind those cerulean eyes. Now there’s only fear. Fear of what came before, fear of what’s yet to come.
Hopper nods. “Sure.” They go out together, arm in arm, steps light. He doesn’t fill the space as much anymore, he’s quiet, shy, introspective in a way that scares Joyce. She used to know what he was thinking, but now? Now it’s a blur, like the smudge of charcoal on a scrap of paper.
“What’cha thinking about?” She asks him and Hopper just shrugs.
“Nothing.”
*
Kamchatka. How could she forget a name like that? Seared onto her brain every time she closes her eyes, the white noise of snow and howling winds that forced tiny, shaking hands to zip her parka up to her nose. She and Murray were allowed along for the ride, Seal Team Six or whatever they liked to call themselves, piling out of a chopper onto Russian soil with no more than a half baked plan and an ounce of hope. She and Murray sat tight and he gave her these smiles of reassurance that made his face twist in unholy and unnatural ways and after a while Joyce tells him please, Murray, please stop .
When they brought him out, this mass of tangled hair and bones that jutted past flimsy paper-thin skin, Joyce almost told them to go back. Who’s this, she wanted to say, this isn’t my Hopper.
My .
Such a selfish word. My, my, my, as if he ever belonged to her, as if the promise of a date meant they were joined at the hip forever. But, Joyce has felt something truly missing at her side for seven long months and this isn’t it. Hollow, unseeing eyes, trembling fingers, a look of complete nonrecognition.
They keep him in a stark white room under surveillance, under anaesthetic, under bright lights that show off every sunken vein, every strand of shock-grey hair. Joyce daren’t tell El they’ve found him for fear he might set her off. Or, she might set him off. A delicate house of cards that would tumble at the slightest gust of air. So, Joyce stands vigil - sometimes Murray too, with a flask of vodka that, for once, she accepts gratefully.
It might make her think of Kamchatka, but it burns as it slides down her throat and that’s a good thing.
The army doctors, or agency doctors, or TV doctors - she’s lost her head at this point, telling them plainly and firmly with a jabbing finger that she’s staying and if they don’t like it they can try, oh brother , they can try to forcibly remove her from this facility, but she pities the fool that’s given that particular job - tell her that something’s wrong inside of his head. The Russians put something in there, something they very quickly took back out again and there’s damage. Lots of damage. The kind of damage that no amount of scar tissue will ever put right again.
“What does that mean?” Joyce asks, feeling Murray’s breath suck back up through his nose. Part of her just wants him to go home, to leave her there to face whatever Hopper comes out of that coma, but she knows he’s just as stubborn as she is.
The seventh doctor of the day looks at her with pity and Joyce wants to tear his tear out and scream . “We can’t say. Not for sure. The injuries are to his Temporal Lobe. There are too many factors--”
“So he’s going to lose his memory?” Murray jumps in, folding his arms around himself protectively. Joyce turns to look at him over her shoulder with a small, sharp frown. Murray shrugs.
“Perhaps. It’s too early to say.”
“Well is or is not the Temporal Lobe the hub of memory acquisition? Are you telling us that when he wakes up, he’s going to have no memory of whatever the fuck happened?”
The doctor says nothing, looking to Joyce as if she might, in her motherly way, quiet Murray like she might a bawling child. She looks to the doctor with a raised eyebrow. “Really? I’m not saving you from this one, pal.”
He trembles slightly beneath her gaze and it’s the only thing that’s given Joyce pleasure in 32 weeks, 7 hours and 53 minutes.
(She’s picked up his mannerisms in her overuse of ‘buddy’s and ‘pal’s and she has to turn away as Murray starts his tirade, feeling a dull, thudding ache in the middle of her chest.)
When they let them back into the observation room there’s other doctors - more competent doctors, Joyce hopes - pressing a needle into the line of his drip, attempting to bring him ‘round from the heavy medication they have him on. She’d expected him to struggle, but he didn’t. He lay there, eyes to the ceiling and let the fog of false sleep pull him down.
Joyce has watched every second of it, chewing her thumbnail jagged. Time moves differently in this place, a hop, skip and jump of it; Joyce wonders if it’s been hours since her last cup of coffee as her hands jitter. She stopped smoking a couple of months after they moved to Indianapolis, finding herself using it as even more of a crutch than she used to. Four packs a day would kill her faster than the stress of two kids and a houseful of memories she daren’t unbox.
El keeps everything Hopper owns; his plaids, his work shirts, his hat, his boots. She sleeps in most of it, or wears some to school. Joyce worries it’ll make her a target of the other kids, with her stunted vocabulary (though she’s been getting better every day, sitting at the kitchen table with Will as they pour over their homework, and Joyce looks at him with so much pride) and old shirts that are rolled up eight times at the sleeves. Sometimes Joyce catches her crying as she tiptoes down the corridor to bed. The door’s ajar - El doesn’t like closing it anymore, three inches is wide enough - and Joyce stands in the shadows as the girl buries her face into her pillow to muffle her grief-stricken sobs.
Mostly she leaves her, though it tugs at her heartstrings like an overzealous harpist, but Joyce lets her miss him in her own way. It’s the least she can do. The box marked Hop still sits at the bottom of her wardrobe, the things from his cabin that El didn’t want, the files on Terry Ives and Brenner, mementos from the Lab, that godforsaken shirt that somehow still made it through an explosion and trampled by a dozen army boots. The only thing she keeps out, pinned to the back of her wallet, tucked in the bottom of her bag, is his badge.
Joyce reaches in for it, pulls it out and looks at it in the bright light. The sheen has dulled, leaving it a mottled bronze; too many times she rubbed her thumb across it, hand deep in her purse, she thinks. A teen cashier at Walmart thought she had a gun, once, and Joyce was too embarrassed to tell him that no, there’s no gun, just a sad woman and a dead man’s badge.
“You know he’s not gonna be the same when he wakes up, right?” Murray says, but there’s no push behind his voice. He doesn’t need to be right this time. He doesn’t want to be.
Joyce nods. “I know.”
“Whatever those Commie bastards were doing to him, we’ve got to be careful. You’ve got to be careful.”
Joyce turns her head a fraction to look at him from the corner of her eye and frowns. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Murray shrugs, one of those I-couldn’t-possibly-say shrugs, before saying: “The Russians are known for their torture methods. Keeping prisoners up, standing, without food, God, throwing water on them so they stay awake, but there’s rumours of something deeper. Darker. Sleeper agents. Mind control--”
She can’t help but snort at that, rolling her eyes. Certifiable, right? Her hands shake. “Mind control? Really? You think the Russians thought the best person to take control of was Hopper ? Not a CIA agent, not a soldier, not a politician, but a Chief of Police from Hawkins?” There’s a tremble in her voice that betrays her fears and she swallows thickly. “You’re expecting the worst. It’s not going to be there.”
He sighs. “Hawkins that’s currently a cesspool for the freaks and cultists and gangbangers. Hawkins that’s the one place that gate to the hellscape they want in on can be opened? Hawkins that they built an underground base in? That Hawkins? Yeah .”
“Shut up, Murray.”
“I’m just saying, Joyce--”
“Shut up , Murray.”
He does, making a strangled choking noise and slumping back against the wall with his arms folded. Joyce looks at the man on the bed and a small voice in the back of her head tells her: be careful .
Somewhere in the haze a doctor says “he’s coming ‘round” and Joyce presses in closer to the glass. His fingers twitch, hand falling from his leg to the bed and a low grumble emanates from somewhere in his chest. They haven’t shaved him yet, but the way the sheets fall away from bone and sinew makes Joyce feel queasy.
Then, he starts to cry.
She’s never seen Hopper cry before, but as deep, hurtful sob shakes him she’s pressing her palm against the window and clawing at the glass. He’s pulling at the drip, arms tugging wires and tubes as he desperately tries to get himself off of the bed and toward one of the padded walls. There’s panic in his eyes; true, child-like, unbridled fear and Joyce’s eyes go wide as he slams himself into one of the panels and bounces off onto the floor.
It’s then that the lights, the bright, white, hot lights start to flicker.
Hopper starts to scream.
And, Joyce starts to run.