Work Text:
Some years ago, I started to write a summary for a story about Hannigram AU Horizon: Zero Dawn. And the same thing is happening, but with Harringrove and how Steve and Billy could fit in this universe.
First of all, I like to think that all the characters from Hawkins are members of the Nora tribe. They live around or inside Mother’s Heart, the capital of the tribe, like in the TV series. So, for example, the Wheeler family live in the city, while the Byers or Hopper live near it.
The Harringrove are one of the richest people among the Nora. Steve’s parents are the ones who create trade agreements between the Nora and the others tribes. They also have a shop in Meridian, the capital of the Carja’s tribe, which is the one that works best and where purchases/sales are the most interesting. And that’s why they started to mostly live in Meridian, instead of Mother’s Heart. They come back time to time, to see if their son is still alive and didn’t burn their house, or didn’t damage their name and influence.
Steve, who lived mostly alone during many years, started to live with his best friend Robin, when she lost her parents. He learned early how to live by himself and with the years, he became a good hunter, fisherman and gatherer. And with Robin, they have started to set up a small business, sharing the tasks: Steve brings back his catches and discoveries, while Robin takes care of reselling and negotiating the prices. Also, because of his past, Steve started to be a good babysitter and teacher for some young Nora. He likes to keep an eye on them or to teach them how to hunt, fish or collect the herbs, fruits, which you can find in nature and are not toxic, to avoid them a danger or what to do in case they have to face a machine one day.
Billy, on the other hand, doesn’t really have a proper identity.
His mother was a member of the Banuk tribe, who travel a lot (they are nomad) and believe in many spiritual things. During a travel, she met and fell in love with his Billy’s father, Neil, who was from the Oseram tribe. He was a traveling blacksmith and after their marriage, Billy’s mother started to follow Neil, becoming a traveling healer (she already was a healer), selling ointments, which she prepared with the medicinal plants that she collected during their travels.
But when Billy arrived, after his birth, the family started to live in Meridian, the Carja’s capital. His mother still worked as a healer, at their home, while his father became a blacksmith in a rich arms store. Which means that Billy was rocked by the magical and spirituals stories of the Banuk tribe from his mother side, learning how to heal with herbal plants. But also, at a young age, he learned how to be a strong man, know how to strike iron and steel, to become a good blacksmith like his father. And he learned the history, literature/poetry and philosophy in one of the Meridian schools.
It resulted that Billy was, as a teenager, a strong young man, capable to make good weapons, heal his own wounds (received by his father or by his work at the forge) and who could talk about poetry with a client of noble origin, when the case was possible.
But, at some point, the violent temper of Neil made Billy’s mother left her family to return to her tribe, in the cold north, near the mountains. Some months/years later, Neil will meet and marry Susan, a middle class Carja, who had a daughter, Maxine, from a previous marriage. And for some reasons, maybe because Neil didn’t like to remember his previous life with his wife or because he thinks that the life in Meridia is not good for his children (too soft, too much books and not enough true hard life), the family will one day move to Mother’s Heart, to start a new life.
Billy, who always dreamed of the wild life, the big empty spaces of the lands he could read in his books, but also, to be able to find his mother, started to be a machines hunter in his free time. He did not fight against machines, because it was often too dangerous, but he had learned, how to track down machines and recover the parts which could fall from them, when they fought with each other or against humans. The items he took of the machines could be sell at a good price, help him built good weapons/traps for himself and were his way for his liberty.
It’s during the annual festival that he will meet Steve. Like in the TV series, both will not like each other’s at first. But, one day, during a hunt, the two will start to fight, after Billy scared off the prey Steve was hunting, while the first one was searching for some dead machines. Their screams will bring back a pack of Scrapper, forcing them to flee (though Billy thought he could beat the machines easily) and take refuge in a cave or somewhere else.
And that’s all for now. Of course, both, at first, would be enemies who would become friends, and then later, lovers. But I would love to try to draw again Steve with a Nora outfit, while Billy would have a mixed outfit of Oseram and Carja style. He also would have a necklace from his mother, which is a blue stone, which can only be find in the mountains, where the Banuk tribe is.