Chapter Text
"The word without the act was nothing."
-Marguerite Young, Angel in the Forest
His footsteps are silent but unsteady when he comes to his front door. He ascribes his disorientation to the injuries he received a few days ago, but no matter how he makes sense of things, fear is what he’s feeling. What he’s always feeling, in some way or another. The control it has over him fluctuates, rising in disasters and falling after them, yet it doesn’t retire. Not ever, not really.
It’s late. The time of night that coats everything in blackness. Places familiar in the daylight are shifting, turning to mazes so easy to get lost in. The deer are awake, feeding and searching, but not much else is. He avoids the woods he used to take walks with Will in; they’re the darkest. Tree branches stretching toward the sky do so leaflessly for the first time in a warm season, having been mauled by the Mind Flayer’s...proxy—a disgusting thing made of the deceased that he can’t get out of his mind.
This time of night makes him worry about Nancy. He was with her a half hour ago, and it still does. But he doesn’t just concern himself with her. He left her because he felt his family wasn’t safe at home. With his paranoia at the helm these days, he has no choice right now but to check on them. If not for their sake, for his own.
He goes through the motions of getting into the house—fitting a cold key into an old lock, cautiously twisting a knob to preserve quietness, and closing a door as soon as it opened because leaving it ajar for more than a second makes him anxious—but he doesn’t actually concentrate on what he’s doing. He won’t remember it at all.
He can detect it. He can detect his loss of patience, of rationality. Soundness of mind has raced way out of reach, like fine sand falling between his fingers. He never found difficulty focusing on anything until two years ago.
How are the others holding up? How is his mom—
“Hey,” he hears. A small, distressed voice that he knows. He’s known.
He stands still, tired eyes looking into her glazed ones from across the living room.
“Hey, mom.” The keys are set down (he doesn’t know where) and he limps to the sink. “Why are you up?”
She sits up straighter on the sofa, weighing options and reciting sentences in her head. “Well, I was waiting on you,” she confesses.
He comes up to her, glass of water clinking against the coffee table as he sets it down in front of her. “Waiting?”
She stares at his offering, frustrated by it. Sometimes she wonders how weak everyone truly thinks she is and if she will equal fragility to them forever. Will anyone ever trust that she would get something to drink if she needed it?
But this is Jonathan. And she is hurting. So it’s a little different.
“Yeah,” she breathes. “There’s something we…”
“Here,” he murmurs as he picks up the glass himself and tries to get it into her hands, about as eager as Hopper used to be treating himself to beers every night. As Lonnie.
She huffs. Takes a quick drink to make him feel better. “There’s something I need to talk to you about. Something I’ve needed to for a while.”
He already looks worried, brows drawn together and jaw set. She’s seen him like this many times before, sure, but not in a long time. He’d been so happy last month, retaining an air of placidity that made her feel good, too. Especially in the morning after being with Nancy (except when she made references to the girl’s visits, of course).
“Oh. Okay,” he says once he’s hesitated for too long.
“Okay.” Her heart, it’s broken, but it’s going so fast right now. She thinks maybe if it struck and drummed her chest at any higher speed, it’d have to stop completely. But she will compose herself; there’s no running away from this. “Okay, I just...I need you to listen to me.”
He nods twice.
“And not interrupt.”
Though most of the people she knows have interrupted her enough to last a lifetime, the request is unnecessary now. With him. Jonathan’s a listener, when he is asked to be and when he is not. All the same, he responds, “Whatever it is, I’m ready to hear. Okay?”
Is he?
“Alright.” It’s unfair that he doesn’t know already. But she needs to start small. Needs to cover certain things like stepping stones which lead to the important news. “My panic attacks have started up again,” she says. Being so careful. Careful with her words, her movements. Carefully trying not to cry. She doesn’t want him to see her as the delicate person she was when they first lost Will.
His hands shake mildly as he scans her thin face for hints. Hints of illness or suffering too extreme to be part of what she’s supposed to be dealing with. Supposed to. As if she ever deserved any of this in the first place. He may not be the most grounded right now, but he has his priorities in an order he swears by—with family at the very top. Tonight, that means he wants to eliminate whatever has interfered with her healing.
It’s a very callow thought; he knows grief can’t be dealt with so simply. Knows it comes in a panoply of terrible shapes and forms.
The urge to fix a problem remains, nonetheless.
“Jonathan?”
He swallows hard. Ignores the knot that tightens between his ribs. “When...when did you start having more of them?”
She looks up to the ceiling, messy braid falling off her shoulder. He holds back from moving closer to her, holds back from talking down to her. She’s not crazy, and she’s not young. But she lost Hopper. He can’t let that go.
“It was just a few. That’s all…” She almost says sweetheart, then bites her tongue. “But, anyway. The first one was on Friday morning, when I woke up. They’re not that bad. I just...started to think. I started to think about what we’ve all been through. And where we’ll go from here.”
She pauses, and he takes the time to speak. “I can take you to the doctor. We can go tomorrow. You can start taking the meds that helped you last fall—”
“No!”
Her firmness startles them both, and he stares at her—more than a little confused—as she pants softly and keeps her body facing forward. The dark television screen shows her their reflections. Or silhouettes, more like, but she thinks Will would still be able to make a skillful drawing of them by only studying it.
Her sons amaze her.
“No. I’m not...I don’t need to take medicine right now,” she says and waves her hand around as if that’s expressive. “That’s not what I need,” she repeats herself, much quieter. Her throat burns, clogged up with spit now that her tears insist on falling.
“I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me.” The confession is honest and maybe it’s the way he said it that stirs her.
She decides to skip some stepping stones. The moment is here. She feels it. “I can’t live here anymore,” she says. Begins to shake her head. “This house, I…”
“Oh,” he speaks lowly.
“We need to leave Hawkins.”
The next few moments go by without sound or action, reacquainting her with the sensation of suspended time she’s been experiencing lately and leaving him alone with his assimilation of an announcement that was expected from somewhere deep in his observant soul.
He thinks he should be angry. Consider her selfish, ineffectual, or reckless.
It’s just not like that. Instead, a close relative of hope rushes through his veins, dousing the flame of sadness that began crackling in his chest at the thought of walking away from everyone. She’s finally doing something for herself —suddenly proactive in piecing her life back together, or starting a new one that’s much different and therefore better. Suddenly inclined to do what they should have done all those years ago
“I know.” The divulgence stuns her a little. Exhibits how mature he is, not that she could forget.
He agrees. He understands.
She looks at him, shedding more tears rapidly. “What?” she asks. Not even for clarification, it’s just all she could think of to say.
“I think we should leave, too.”
She listens to the ticking clock on the wall, wondering if it’s unsafe that she’s breathing at a faster pace than the second hand is going. “It...it might be far away, Jonathan,” she begins, soft timbre of her voice disappearing as she tries to keep her emotions at bay. “Where I wanna go. I don’t know any specifics yet,” she admits and wipes at her eyes. “It could take a while to sell the house, but…I’ve been trying to get it on the market for a while.”
For a while. He can’t believe she was considering this before Independence day. He thought all of this was about Hopper. “You...all this time, you didn’t want to live here?”
She shakes her head.
He breathes out heavily. How long? How long has she wanted to go but stayed here for them? Knowing Hawkins was standing in her way of a better life, knowing she was somewhere she didn’t want to call home. Couldn’t call home. “I’m so sorry,” he says.
When she doesn’t reply, he turns to her. “It will be months, mom. Before we can leave. Are you gonna be okay?” He doesn’t need to remind her that the house isn’t paid off yet.
“I will. I promise. I...maybe keeping this from you was upsetting me the most. I don’t know. I think I’ll be fine. Now that this is a certain thing, I’m being honest, I will. It’s good knowing we don’t have to stay.”
“And we won’t,” he says. Leans forward to hug her. She twists to be able to reciprocate as his arms come around her, hand supporting her head. She holds onto his sides, wanting to save his shoulders from any more pain.
“We’ll go anywhere,” Jonathan insists, “anywhere you want.”
Heart pounding, eyes stinging, she hugs him tightly. Her appreciation left unsaid yet immeasurable.
Somehow, he hugs her tighter.