Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

oi.

(“Who are you,” Eleven asks but what she really means is what are you?

“I died,” Tammy answers, knowing it is barely more than an excuse.

Last night she dreamed she was a sparrow in a bird cage—staring up at the wide, open sky just outside the locked window. She wants to explain it, but Eleven does not yet understand how many cages there are. How many ways there are to grow wings.)

i.

Tammy is named for both her grandmothers, Tamar Finley and Seraphina Thompson.

Tamar was the name of an Isreali princess, but Tammy has never really felt like much of a princess. Scratched knees, dirt beneath her fingernails, mud in her blonde hair from mornings spent playing in the woods. She did not feel like anything in particular, but especially not a princess.

No one had ever thought to ask her if she had liked her name. She knew that it would be unusual for her parents to ask her, a baby and then a young child, if she liked her name—ask if she enjoyed the mixture of vowels and consonants that set her apart from the rest of the world… but she would have liked it if they had. Even after she grew older and started to read books on etymology, nobody thought to ask her if she agreed with what she was called.

It was one of the many things that Tammy noticed and cared about that most people didn’t, but she couldn’t make herself not notice. And she certainly could not, she later found out, make herself not care either.

Seraphina means to catch fire . Tammy was proud of that name. Before she turned thirteen, she had spent every spare weekend at her uncle’s house, sitting quietly by his fire pit—her skin tight from the mixture of the fire’s heat and the air’s chill, sticky with accumulated sweat. She liked to be the one to add wood to the fire, watching the way it crackled, the afterimage of its golden hue bright on the underside of her blinks.

Sometimes in the winter, she dreamed of holding that fire close, letting it settle inside her ribs—another extinguishable thing to keep her heart company. And other times, in the summer heat, she dreamed of drinking in those beautiful flames, letting them burn the insides of her throat, flaring hungry in the architecture of her body. 

In those moments she wanted to burn down the world, but more than that she wanted to burn herself.

ii.

When Tammy was four years old, she got lost.

Her mother had stepped inside for a moment and in the distance, just beyond the treeline bordering their home there had been a flickering light in the distance. Tammy had thought the light was her father and wandered into the trees. He had taken her older brother into those woods that morning and had not returned yet, and Tammy had been quietly jealous at being left out.

Now that she’s in the woods, she can admit that there’s nothing special about them.

Tammy steels herself and looks around the clearing—searching for that flickering light or the way out, growing more anxious with each passing moment. She had gotten herself into the woods, Tammy told herself, surely she could get herself out.

Back straight as she could make it, Tammy set out on her own little adventure, feeling very much like Bilbo Baggins—only not really, because her adventure was so short.

But it turned out to not be that short, after all. She had tried to follow the sounds, but she couldn’t hear anything outside of the sound of her own breathing. She had tried to yell for her papa, but no one came running to find her. She had tried to find her footprints to retrace, but there were no footprints to find. And after a while, everything started to look the same.

Tammy’s eyes started filing as her mind wandered back to the scary episode of Scooby Doo she had watched with her older brother that morning. She shivered as she remembered Mr. Hyde’s bloodcurdling cackle and green complexion, and then she thought about Bilbo’s adventure and grew even more anxious. Tammy, scared but trying to now show it, clutched the edge of her thick winter dress with shaking fingers and decided to keep walking, waiting for some knight to save her like they did in all the stories or, at least, her papa to find her.

Tammy is hungry and cold, her sandals and socks wet from where she slipped in a puddle. Finally she stops, sitting in the middle of a clearing and huddling into herself for warmth. She doesn't cry, but she's about to—she’s been out here forever, and the sun is starting to set, and her parents probably forgot all about her—

Then she hears a voice.

"So this is where you were hiding," a soft woman’s voice whispers. Tammy peeks her head up from her bent knees and up at the woman—she is wearing a long nightgown and her white hair is pulled back in a long braid that hands down her back. She looks old enough to be Tammy’s grandmother, but Tammy had already met Grandma Seraphina and Grandma Tamar died before Tammy was born.

She seems so familiar, her very presence disarming. The closer she looked, the more Tammy recognized the face of her mother but with more wrinkles. The tone of her voice was comforting as well, her accent felt like home… She was exactly what Tammy always imagined her namesake to be.

She waits for Tammy to clamor off the ground with a bemused expression.

“Your parents are looking for you,” she says, and Tammy deflates immediately. She doubts they’re looking for her and even if they are, they’re just going to yell at her for wandering off. “Come, I’ll take you back.” 

It’s nighttime now and the woman seems to reflect the moonlight off her. Tammy thinks about how angry her mom is going to be, thinks about how nice and pretty this old lady is and suddenly she doesn’t really want to leave. The woman bends down to Tammy’s level when the girl refuses to budge.

“What’s your name, little one,” she asks and Tammy is sure she has grandkids, because her voice reminds her of the tone that her friend’s grandma uses when Tammy is being particularly stubborn.

“Tamar,” she says, fidgeting with the hem of her dress, “but you can call me Tammy.”

“What a coincidence,” the woman says lightly, “that’s my name too.”

iii.

On Tammy’s thirteen birthday, she drowns. She slips and slams her head against the stones of her family's outdoor pool. 

(But that's not all that happens, is it?)

On September 8, 1979, Tamar Seraphina Thompson dies slowly, quietly—watching the sky beyond the water turn purple like a bruise, silence engulfing her as she sinks like a stone.

And suddenly she can hear everything .

iv.

Tammy wakes up in the hospital, blinking.

Darkness webs around the edge of her eyes, leaving her with only a pinhole to see through. She remembers thinking—thinking—

Tammy tries to stand as her parents start to raise their voices, calling out to a nurse to come quickly. Tammy’s head is throbbing in time with their cries, her mother wraps thin arms around Tammy’s shoulders.

“Y-you’re awake,” she whispers against Tammy’s hair, but Tammy’s eyes are focused on the horror in front of her. Perched at the end of her bed is a girl—red hair tangled into a low ponytail, headphones over her ears, eyes unseeing, blood dripping from the sockets.

And suddenly Tammy is not in the hospital room—

( she is in a forest—three boys search in the pouring rain—flashlights peering into the darkness— )

( a woman slams an axe into her wall—over and over—light bursting—"come on, Joyce, just look around at this place"—"until the day I die"— )

( a girl, an order, an alarm—split, split, split—pretty boys that bleed in the dark—"what have you done?”—blonde hair spattered in red—"i told you to wait"—red on a white uniform"—"you've broken everything"—)

—Tammy startles back into herself, coughing and racked with body shaking sobs, her mother’s cries lodged in her ears. All the world will be made anew , Tammy thinks, remembers the words like some half-whispered song, and as soon as the thought comes tears gather in Tammy’s eyes.

v.

Tammy spends the days being fawned over by her mother and her nights elsewhere.

The dreaming is strange. Shapes, disjointed moments, memories strung together out of order—a metal bat sliding into her calloused hand, a grandfather clock that rings four times, the weight of something cruel and slimy around her neck, dropping pucks down a plinko board. Her mind is a black widow’s nest, her thoughts a deadly sort of sticky. The venom clings to her dreams.

It makes for restless sleep, meandering wanderings in a world that runs parallel to our own and stretches on endlessly.

One night she dreams of Dr. Brenner.

He is in his lab—Tammy knows this despite never having walked through the threshold, the same way she knows that Barbara Holland survived exactly two minutes and eighteen seconds after being dragged into that pool and that Bob Newby always dreamed of being a hero, knows it the same way she knows that in another dimension Henry Creel is walking a cold, desolate wasteland (but he won't be alone for much longer, will he?). 

Tammy looks down and her hands are wrong, too large and calloused, the wrists cuffed in thick white material. She realizes with a start that Dr. Brenner is speaking to her. Speaking at her, dismissive like she's a piece of furniture. 

"Have Eleven search for him," he says, "I know he's still out there, somewhere, waiting in the darkness." 

Tammy turns to leave the room but her eye catches on a video feed—a bedroom, sparse, and sitting on top of the bed is a girl that Tammy would recognize anywhere. She moves forward, hand extended to touch it, but Dr. Brenner is looking at her and the girl’s head snaps up to peer at the camera and the walls press closer.

Tammy wakes up sweating.

vi.

(The next night she dreams of California. A woman in a white dress, standing on a beach, her hair an ocean wave in the wind. In Tammy’s dreams she is a bird in flight, staring down as a boy runs across the sand, a board in his hands and laughter on his lips. Under her wings the beach drags onward, as the boy and his mother disappear out of her view. 

In her dream all the winds run east, the sky stretching impossibly long, and no one could ever catch her.)

vii.

Tammy misses two months of school.

All her classmates sign a get well soon card that her homeroom teacher gives her along with a little bag of candy.

“The kids knew you missed Halloween and wanted to make you feel included,” she explains with Tammy asks.

“Oh,” Tammy says, her eyes skimming across the names written in the card and notices that her teacher had gotten her older brother’s class to sign. She runs her fingers briefly over a little doodle of her dressed in a knight suit, a sword held deftly in her badly drawn hands. You got this is written in chaotic handwriting and signed with a messy Eddie Munson .

Tammy blinks, pushing away images of a rolling dice and the way his eyes has sparkled when he ran his first module, and smiles at the memory.

viii.

Tammy’s first memory goes like this:

She is four and the world is a large, sprawling place. Her birthday is in five days and her mother drops her off at daycare with the other kids while she goes to work. It’s nap time and Tammy’s eyes are heavy with sleep; she is wrapped in a fuzzy blanket.

“Are you awake,” a small voice whispers near Tammy’s face, blowing warm breath on her cheek with each word.

She blinks blearily at the boy and thinks for a moment before shaking her head no.

The boy makes a soft sound in the back of his throat. “Liar,” he giggles, “I can see your eyes open.”

In a sudden burst of inspiration, Tammy closes her eyes and feigns snoring sounds like her older brother does to get out of cleaning his room.

But the boy doesn’t leave. He keeps giggling, quiet delighted sounds.

“I’m Steve,” he says, “what’s your name?”

Tammy thinks long and hard about not answering, but she’s awake and (most importantly) bored. So, she opens her eyes, blinking up at Steve, and whispers her name, soft so she doesn’t get in trouble from the Teacher, “I’m Tamar but my mom calls me Tammy.”

“Tamar is a pretty name,” Steve says, and Tammy thinks how nice it would be to dip her fingers into his hair. Soft , she thinks, I bet his hair would feel marshmallow soft .

Tammy smiles at him and this is a seed—something small and feeble, planted in the soil of her chest, warm and soft, glowing.

Steve Harrington was born three months, one week and six days before her.

Tammy can’t imagine a world without him.

ix.

In Tammy’s dreams, she meets the girl she might’ve become.

Tammy dreams of a life where her confidence came from a passion and dream she was ill suited for. A life where she feared failure and yearned for Nashville, yearned for that golden hued limelight. She dreams of a life where she was mean and dismissive, losing her patience with anyone who stood in her way. A life where she looked at Steve Harrington like an open wound and he never looked back. A life where Robin Buckley looked at her like an open wound and Tammy never looked back either.

Tammy sleeps and dreams, and decides she doesn’t like the other Tammy, the one she might’ve been.

x.

“You’re different now,” her best friend, Ally, says.

In Tammy’s mind's eye she can see it clearly—the distance and awkward silences that drag on for a moment too long to be kind, Ally and her other friends pulling away from her slowly and then all at once. In her dreams, she is always alone—except for the dreams where she isn’t—

(—a hand grasped in her own—blonde hair blowing in a dark blue sky streaked in red lightning—“who are you”—wake up, Tammy—a boy’s face, pale and scared—it’s time to wake up, Tammy—“are you here to save me?”— wake up tammy —)

Maybe if Tammy was friends with nicer girls they would stick around and decide that a weird Tammy was better than a dead one. But she has seen what true friendship looks like and it makes Tammy’s brain itchy.

“No,” Tammy says, and she thinks of the other Tammy, thinks of Will Byers coming back from the dead, thinks of Eleven and Henry in the Rainbow Room, “not different.”

(And this is the truth of it. There are some things that stop your time, some things one cannot come back from. And when Mike said that his life started in those woods, what he really meant is that the boy he was before died in those woods and what was left was something else.

Tammy isn't different—it's just that she died and something else took her place.)

xi.

Tammy is sixteen.

The end is so close now—the air itself tastes of change, of monsters made of blood and bone and teeth—but Tammy has plans, has a diary of strategies and schemes written in the early morning light when the dreams are their freshest.

The time is near, and she cannot stop the waves of images from overcoming her—forcing her to her knees, eyes unseeing and bleeding from her nose—

(—Steve’s hands (wrapped around a metal bat), Eddie’s curls (flying in the air, a streak of dark in the lightning flash), Johnathan’s knuckles (broken skin crusted with dried blood), Billy’s eyes (hallowed, so very scared, walking into that good night without even knowing what lies in that Steelmill), Mike’s face (turned downward as he inspects his best friend’s abandoned bicycle), Nancy’s fingers (deft around the trigger of her shotgun), Robin’s laughter (high and mischievous, happy and light), Joyce’s tears (joyful in the reflected glow of Christmas lights), Hopper’s body (starved and hard with wiry muscles, built from months of forced labor), Will’s eyes (he’s waiting, always waiting, watching, a spy standing just outside of view)—)

The end is coming. Tammy spends money earned babysitting for the Sinclairs and Hendersons on ammo and survival equipment—a bag of monster hunting gear in the trunk of her car along with a tape player and dozens of cassette tapes.

She’s ready.

xii.

( Once during a bad argument, Tammy’s older brother says, “My sister died. You’re—someone else.”

Yes , Tammy thinks, but she is not sad. She loves him, loves her entire family, but the woman she is becoming is not the girl they lost. Dead and alive. Here and somewhere else. )

xiii.

Tammy is fifteen.

She stands outside Castle Byers for hours, watching the spores float in the morning light, her lips shuddering in the golden heat of morning, aching, warm.

It won’t be long now , she thinks.

No , the wind whispers back, it won’t be long at all .

xiv.

(When Tammy was younger, she wished the world could be as beautiful as it was in all the songs.

When Tammy is older, she wishes she could go back to a time when she still felt the gentle stirring of music in her soul.)

xv.

Tammy is seventeen.

The night that Will Byers disappears, not a soul notices until the next morning.

(Only that isn't true, is it?)

Tammy grabs her dad’s Raven MP-25 and her brother’s favorite javelin—slips on her backpack full to the brim with stolen liquor bottles and survival gear. She has never really felt like a princess, but she has spent her life dreaming about how it would feel to catch fire and take the world with her.

She never specified which world she would be burning.

Chapter Text

oi.

(Tammy wakes at the height of the full moon, startling awake as the light peeking through her bedroom curtains passes across her fluttering eyelashes. In the distance, the fireflies sing their mysteries and the trees whisper secrets to her.

The woods are hungry. The woods demand to be fed. The woods are old enough to remember when Henry Creel used to feed them.

Tammy is thirteen, just a child. What is a child to do with such power in her veins?)

i.

In another universe Tammy rode into Nashville in her father’s old Chevy truck, a song in her heart and a smile wide on her face.

In this universe she dreams.

ii.

Exactly three hours and eighteen minutes after Will Byers vanishes, Tammy slips into the Void.

She piles logs in their fireplace, tendering a flame using dryer lint and wood shavings from her brother’s hamster cage. She turns off all the lights and pulls all the curtains to shut out even the lightest sliver of moonlight.

She lies down in front of the fire—slowing her breathing and keeping her eyes open, focusing on the sound of the fire crackling in time with her heart beat and the feeling of curling warmth against her skin, the gentle gold painting the underside of her blinks. The ceiling’s crown molding turns from a flickering orange to red to purple, and then darker and darker until she is lying in pitch black.

She finds Will huddled in Castle Byers, hands shaking and so very scared. She reaches out her hand to touch his face. He turns to look at her, eyes widening in surprise and he opens his mouth to speak—

I’ve found you, she thinks, already rising to slip on her favorite windbreaker.

iii.

“What can you tell me about astral projection?”

Eddie blinks up at her from the Player’s Handbook in his hands. “Uh,” he stumbles, looking around like he expects Tammy to be talking to someone else. Tammy points at the book in his hands expectantly.

“You’re Elijah Thompson’s sister, right?” At Tammy’s nod, he seems to frazzle at the edges, peering suspiciously at her. Tammy isn’t surprised—she expected it, the suspicion. Her brother is popular, an athlete, and not particularly kind to boys like Eddie Munson.

“Okay,” he says, trying to make her fit into whatever puzzle he’s constructed in his head. He rubs the back of his neck and stares down at her, “Elijah Thompson’s little sister is asking me a question about Dungeon and Dragons.”

Tammy nods again, fingers pulling at the hem of her pleated skirt with sudden nerves. Suddenly, she doesn’t feel so confident. The Eddie in her dreams was kind, brave in a fashion—but this Eddie doesn’t know her, not really, and doesn’t trust her. It chafes at the part of her that has watched him die a dozen different ways, the part of her that has weathered his triumphs and tragedies—an unseen specter peering into the deepest, loneliest parts of his psyche.

“The Astral Spell is seventh level,” he warns after a short hesitation, “it’ll take a long time before any of your characters can use it.”

Tammy says nothing because she doesn’t plan on ever playing Dungeons and Dragons.

“It’s an alteration spell.” At Tammy’s blank look he explains, “It allows you to change the physical characteristics of something—it’s alchemy.”

Tammy is quiet for a long moment before she tentatively repeats, “Alchemy?”

He makes a noise. “I can see you overthinking it, Thompson. The Astral Spell isn’t just stepping into another plane of existence, it’s about tearing apart your mental presence in this world and rebuilding somewhere else.”

“It’s like this,” he says pulling a dandelion from the ground, “Nothing in this world is fixed, it’s all mutable—” he plucks a few petals and rubs them between his fingers until they disappear into vaguely yellow splotches of color on Eddie’s fingertips, “—alteration is forcing the state of living and nonliving things to your will. You can turn dirt into gold, turn a man into a frog, turn rain into snow.”

Tammy blinks, “So astral projection is just…”

“Yeah,” he smiles, “it’s turning yourself into a ghost.”

iv.

Four hours and thirty two minutes after Will Byers slips into another world, Tammy stands in the forest between the Byers' home and Hawkins lab.

A cold breeze lifts her hair and it ripples around her head as she exits her car. Tammy pulls her limbs closer, tugging her favorite windbreaker over her hands. She clutches a flashlight in her hand as she walks further into the woods.

After an hour of walking, she finally comes upon a clearing where the air is its thinnest and through the canopy rays of moonlight filter down and she can see spores dancing in the light, twirling around her.

It’ll be quick, Tammy thinks to herself. I’ll find Will and I’ll have him out before morning.

Tammy doesn’t see the shadow moving behind her until it's too late.

v.

There are two types of ghosts.

Not all dead things linger—most are content to disappear, fade into that good night, but some specters persist. It is not unfinished business that makes a ghost. All dying men have some kind of unfinished business, even the eldest humans with decades with decades to put their affairs to bed, they all have something they would like to amend, something that they wish they had said, something they wish they had done.

What makes a ghost is a desire to never be forgotten, to enact some kind of justice on the world, some kind of greatness resting deep inside them. Sometimes the wrongness of them is simply too great to undo, the offense too severe to lay at rest—some sorrows linger too strongly to be laid to rest. 

And sometimes, it is not about them—sometimes it is about the person who killed them and their cruel desire to be remembered, to enact some twisted wrongness worth avenging.

Tammy thinks the ghosts haunting Hawkins are a mix of both.

vi.

(Tammy stands in the middle of the heart of Hawkin’s forest, bathed in moonlight.

The woods are still hungry. The woods are still old enough to remember the last god-touched child who wandered them.

Tammy is seventeen, a woman grown. She knows what must be done.)

vii.

“What kind of character are you making,” Eddie asks.

“I don’t play,” Tammy admits, tugging at the hem of her skirt, as she tries to sit on the ground in a way that will minimize the amount of grass stains. She thinks for a moment before amending, “at least not yet.”

She doesn’t think she will ever pick up Dungeons and Dragons, but what she is doing with Henry Creel feels like a game.

“What about you?” Tammy asks.

Eddie’s eyes flash in delight and he pulls out a spiral binder, flipping it open to the first bundle of papers—thick and bluish, a mass of writing and numbers scrawled into the open spaces. “This is Volos,” he says, proud, “he’s a paladin.”

Tammy hums, looks at the character sheet—in the margins Eddie has doodled swords and elaborately decorated shields.

“He’s brave,” Eddie says, voice suddenly very small and Tammy can hear the whispers of his thoughts, too large for his own brain, spilling into her own, the feeling of his insecurity brushing against her skin, giving her goosebumps—brave in all the ways I am not, it says, I wish I was brave—

Tammy blinks away memories of how it felt to cradle a guitar—this one’s for you Christy—and tries her best to give Eddie a convincing smile.

viii.

In the woods around the Hawkins Lab are twenty-six ghosts ranging from ages five to thirty, all with bleeding eyes and mangled limbs.

The first time Tammy meets one of them, she pukes all over her favorite dress.

“What are you,” Tammy asks, wiping bile away from her lips with the back of her hand, and as soon as the words leave her mouth, the terrible specter turns towards her—face twisted and concave, skin glowing in the midday sun—

And that scares Tammy more than anything else, sights like these belong to the night, to the moonlight, to midnight strolls stolen when the sky is at its darkest—the sunlight is too harsh for such horrible atrocities. The day is for me, Tammy wants to say, you shine too brightly here .

“You can see me?” The ghost twists its head, bones cracking and it peers down at where Tammy lay with an unseeing gaze, hallowed and tar black. It is wearing an old dress, with a high collar and a string of pearls, hair in perfect curls made skewed by a spattering of dried blood.

Tammy nods and then feels bad because the specter is missing an eye and the other one is milky and half melted. “Yes,” she says meekly. “My name is Tammy—who are you?”

“My name?” The ghost asks, “my name is… oh, I don’t remember. Do you think you could help me find my name, little girl?”

“I—” Tammy starts, but she stumbles, nervous and frightened, before settling on, “maybe. What happened to you?”

The specter hunches. 

“The Devil,” it admits, “I gave birth to the devil and he had his clutches in me after, he dragged me down into hell, into this hell. I paid for it, me and my family—my precious little Alice paid for it.”

ix.

Tammy is in a garden.

Her hair is tucked into twin braids, tied with ribbons that match the scratchy woolen dress her mama made her wear. She is sitting at mama’s marble table, hands clutching her delicate teapot—it is the color of buttercups with dainty roses painted around the lid. She is surrounded by stuffed animals.

“Tea?” Tammy asks in a voice that doesn’t match her own.

Across the table her older brother sits, brooding and unhappy at being forced to play girly games. “Yes,” he says, holding out his tea cup and when Tammy turns up his nose at the rudeness he mutters please.

When Tammy leans forwards to pour into the boy’s cup, there is a soft splattering town and she looks down where something red has dribbled on to the pristine tablecloth.

“You’ve gotten blood on the table, Henry,” Tammy says.

“No,” the boy corrects.

Tammy touches her face and notices her hand comes back bloody, sticky and red—it’s coming from her nose, her eyes, her ears, and she starts screaming. Her mama is yelling from inside the house and she can hear Virginia Creel running from the house to the garden and Tammy notices that Henry is trying to hide a smile behind his hand.

Oh, Tammy thinks, I’m just dreaming.

With the realization, she stops screaming. Tammy can hear her mother’s increasingly worried calls and the sound of a door opening, but she cannot drag her eyes from Henry’s face.

“Huh,” he says, surprised. “You’re not Alice—who are you?”

Tammy blinks and she is back in her own bed, sweating and shaking.

x.

The monster’s teeth bite into the tender meat of her left shoulder. Tammy screams, tugs the gun from her waist band and shoots it point blank. It rears back, its teeth rip from her skin and she tries to not focus on the starchy, wet sound of the sticky blood slick on the fabric of her windbreaker. Tammy raises the weapon and empties two more rounds into the beast.

On the third shot, the gun misfires.

The monster grunts, running towards her and knocking her to the ground. The gun goes flying from her hand and she screams in fear and pain and frustration—Tammy never saw this, never saw a future where she died and she suddenly realizes that it made her sloppy, arrogant. Her hands feel around blindly for the gun as she struggles to put room between her and the monster, and her fingers find something long and solid, metal.

Elijah’s favorite javelin—

Wasting no time, Tammy slams the javelin into the monster’s open mouth. It rears back, howling in pain.

Tammy is already up on her feet, running away from the bloody scene.

xi.

Tammy has always been strange, queer—off putting.

Even before Tammy’s tumble into her family’s pool, adults would peer at her and think to themselves, softly, how odd. They would take one look at her with her big gray eyes that seemed to know something they didn’t and veins just a shade too visible under her pale skin and they would go hazy, cross eyed for a moment—and then they would look away, shaking their head lightly and promptly forgetting the encounter entirely.

In another world, Tammy would have grown out of it—would have grown into a lovely young woman who carefully manicured her nails and teased her hair into large curls, who carefully refused to acknowledge her own strangeness. In another world, Tammy would pretend that she couldn’t sometimes hear the thoughts of those around her, that she didn’t wake from dreams that seemed to come true more often than not, that she didn’t occasionally feel too big for her own skin.

In this world, Tammy listens and follows the sound.

xii.

Tamar, the words sing, we are so hungry.

xiii.

Tammy is dreaming.

Henry is braiding her hair, carefully pulling at the strains and plaiting them together—slow, methodical like he’s tying a noose.

“I picked them,” Henry admits, “I chose them, every last one, but I didn’t choose you.”

Tammy’s fingers tug at the hem of her nightgown. They are in her bedroom, but not really—they are surrounded by decay and darkness, poison in her lungs, spores floating in the air.

“Tammy Thompson,” he says, a soft caress against the shell of your ear, “What are you?”

xiv.

“Tammy” Henry says, a soft melody caressing the shell of her ear, “I am so hungry.”

xv.

Time slows to a stop in the Upside Down. Her wrist watch stops working the moment she arrives—the hands stuck at 2:47am. There are no stars, no moon. Everything is dark and the forest looks the same in each direction.

And, most notably, it is entirely silent.

All around Tammy are the ambient noises of the many monsters living in these woods, but it is silent . No visions, no secrets, no ghosts, no whispers from the woods. For the first time since the pool, Tammy is completely alone, completely human.

Will Byers, Tammy reminds herself and startles, unused to the suddenness of her own monologue drifting in the emptiness of her own skull.

Chapter Text

Steve Harrington

oi.

In another world where Will Byers was the only missing child, Nancy Wheeler would feel safe enough to spend the night at Steve Harrington’s house.

In this world, Nancy smiles apologetically and takes Barb home after she slices open her hand. Tommy and Carol follow ten minutes later, clumsily groping each other as they giggle their way to Tommy’s car.

Five minutes after everyone leaves, all the lights in the Harrington home go dead. A cold breeze blows through Steve’s backyard and the spores move with it, whipping into a wide circle. 

Two minutes later the lights flicker back on, but the yard is empty and Steve Harrington is missing.

…

..

.

Robin Buckley

oi.

When Robin was twelve, she watched from her bedroom window as her next door neighbor almost drowned.

She threw open her window and screamed until Elijah Thompson heard and pulled his little sister from the water.

(She had never quite grown out of compulsively checking to make sure Tammy was still alive.)

i.

The night Will Byers goes missing, Robin watches Tammy drive away into the night.

ii.

“Something isn’t right, Barb,” Robin says.

Barbara frowns and hesitantly replies, “Maybe she just ran away.”

“Tammy isn’t like that,” Robin says. “You didn’t see her last night—she was on a mission, she—”

“You said she had a duffel bag,” Barbara interrupts gently.

Robin feels like there are stones in her stomach. She swallows thickly—something is wrong, she thinks. Robin remembers how Tammy had looked at her house with such purpose, the resolve so obvious even from her window on the second floor across the street. That was not a girl who planned on disappearing.

Robin flexes her fingers, feeling the steel of her bones. She stands straighter.

“She didn’t run away,” Robin says firmly. “Something else happened last night."

“What do you want me to do?” Barbara sighs.

Robin licks her lips. “I saw the direction she went and you have your license—I want you to take me there.”

iii.

“Robin,” Barb murmurs. The rain is coming down in sheets, so thick they can barely see in front of them. Robin’s hair is sticking to her face uncomfortably and the howl of the downpour is deafening.

“Who are you?” one of the boys demands.

“My name is Robin,” she replies, she points behind her. “This is Barbara.”

One of the other boys blinks, squints. “Barb?”

“Mike?”

iv.

Twenty-five minutes later they stumble on two things in quick succession: Tammy’s car and a bald girl huddled in the back seat.

(The girl’s name is Eleven—and she knows about Tammy, or rather she knows of Tammy. Mike takes her to his house and they part ways with promises to meet up after school.)

v.

"So she's magic," Dustin tells Robin when she finally manages to sneak into the basement.

Robin makes a confused noise.

“She can, like, move stuff with her mind,” he emphasizes. Dustin points at the girl and gleefully asks her to show Robin.

Eleven twitches her head and the board game lifts several feet into the air, the individual pieces spinning around in spiral patterns.

Robin curses and feels a pounding headache creeping on.

vi.

(They say they found Tammy’s corpse in the quarry with Will Byers.

“She’s not dead,” Robin says when she hears the news.

Eleven nods, holding Robin’s hand in her much smaller palm. Her skin is warm.)

vii.

"Mr. Clarke?" Robin asks, surprised.

“Miss Buckley?” he asks, equally surprised.

“No time,” Dustin announces, dragging away Robin from her very baffled former science teacher.

viii.

“Don’t freak out,” Barb says.

Robin curses, rubbing at her face as she watches the kids struggle to follow her through Barbara’s open window.

“Is that my brother?” Nancy asks.

“Yeah,” Robin sighs.

Barb frowns. Nancy opens her mother and closes it, her face scrunching up. “Why?”

“We had to bike away from a bunch of Feds like the kids from ET,” Robin recites dutifully, “and I couldn’t think of a safer place to hide.”

“Oh,” Nancy says and then blinks, “wait what?”

“You know Tammy Thompson?” Barbara asks, continuing when Nancy nods, “Robin saw her leaving her house that night and asked me to help her figure out what happened. We found her car and the girl—” she points at Eleven, “—running from something —”

“Monsters are real,” Robin interrupts.

Barb sends her a look.

“What?” Robin says, “she was going to find out later.”

…

..

.

Eddie Munson

oi.

There was a time, once, when Elijah Thompson and Eddie Munson had been—well, not friends, but friendly. Eddie had been the relatively popular boy and Elijah the maladjusted outcast.

If asked when that changed, Eddie would claim that he didn’t remember. They had just, magically, swapped places one day.

(If pressed, Eddie would grow silent, uncomfortable. He would look at his hands, his fingernails, and murmur it wasn’t my fault in a small voice.)

i.

“Sick,” Dan grins down at the squawking baby bird, it gives a shrill sound with each poke and prod of the stick in his small hands.

Eddie feels sick at the sight, but Dan is his best friend and the coolest kid in fourth grade, so Eddie doesn’t dare say a word. And just as Eddie reaches the end of his rope and opens his mouth to ask Dan to stop, Elijah Thompson flies across the playground and shoves Dan into the dirt.

“Wha—” Dan squeaks and his eyes fixate on the now ripped hem of his favorite shorts. Dan’s mom had bought them for his birthday yesterday—they’re bright blue and yellow with small batman faces decorating them. He had excitedly shown them to Eddie that morning.

Without another word, Elijah brings down his foot on the hand Dan is holding the stick with. The pair struggle—Elijah throwing baby punches and Dan trying to stumble away, sobbing. Within minutes, Couch Anderson has crossed the playground and ripped Elijah away from the smaller boy. Eddie watched, in mute disbelief, as Coach Anderson dragged away both boys to the office.

When he had peered back at the baby bird that started the whole fight—it was already dead.

ii.

(Years later, Eddie will realize that the parts of that afternoon he remembers best are the parts that everyone else remembers least.

They remember Elijah flying across the playground and knocking Dan to the ground, and how Dan’s face had taken weeks to go back to normal. Few will mention how Mrs Thompson could no longer attend her childhood church because Mr Shelton's brother was the pastor or how Dan never raised his hand in class anymore. Even less will remember that Eddie, when asked by the principal what happened, had looked between the two boys and lied.

No one save Eddie, Dan and Elijah will recall the baby bird at all.)

iii.

In ninth grade, Elijah’s sister almost dies.

Their homeroom teacher makes them sign the girl’s get well soon care—and Dan, still raw and angry about the beating he received years prior, says something cruel about even Elijah’s sister wanting to get away from him. 

Everyone’s eyes turn to him, their faces contorted—too late Dan realizes his misstep. In the years since that afternoon in the playground, Elijah had become prettier by the day and his talent for violence transitioned smoothly into a talent for sports. And as Elijah’s star rose, Dan’s stagnated and Eddie’s faded entirely. People liked Elijah now, and they didn’t like Dan anymore.

Dan turns to Eddie then, desperate, but Eddie had not been his friend in years. He turns away, ashamed and feeling small.

(Eddie realizes after that Elijah also turned to him, his gaze burning.)

iv.

(Tammy Thompson is strange with her all big-eyed, bewitching smiles, like she has noticed something you haven’t, like she has peeled back your skin and knows you better than you know yourself—

—but Eddie is always watching, always noticing the Thompson siblings.)

v.

The first day after Tammy’s disappearance, Elijah doesn’t show up for school. The second day, he skips regionals. When he returns the third day, his teammates are furious. Tammy Thompson has been missing for three days and Elijah is one comment away from a meltdown—

“Get the fuck away from me,” Elijah sneers, voice loud enough to carry across the gym to the bleachers where Eddie sits with his Hellfire club notebook.

“Do you even care about the team?” Jason asks. The boy had idolized Elijah since middle school and Elijah had always risen to the occasion, had always scored the winning basket, had always impressed him.

“I’m not sorry that I missed your stupid game,” Elijah snaps. “My sister is missing, fuckwit.”

Jason hesitates and Tommy takes the reins.

“Shove it up your ass, Thompson,” Tommy sneers.

Elijah pushes Tommy to the ground and storms out of the gym. In the rush of voyeurs and gossip, Eddie slips away and follows him.

He finds Elijah huddled behind the library, still wearing his basketball uniform, face collapsed into his arms. Don’t look, Eddie reminds himself when he feels his eyes linger on the strong lines of his exposed legs, the wiry muscles covered by a thin layer of blonde hair.

Eddie almost talks himself into leaving without saying a word but just as he turns to go, Elijah interrupts him.

“What the fuck do you want, Munson?” Elijah sounds tired, frustrated at his tears.

“Tammy,” Eddie says and then flushes when he realizes how it sounds. “I mean–I want to help find her—I want to help you bring her back.”

Elijah’s gaze is the same burning intensity that Eddie has never quite gotten used to.

“You can kick my ass or whatever, but I just want to help.” Eddie says, trying to seem like he doesn’t care.

Elijah looks at him and Eddie can’t identify the look on his face. He finally croaks, “Why?”

“Tammy is weird,” Eddie says and he means it. Tammy Thompson is one of the strangest humans he has ever met, but Eddie likes her, is fond of her.

He had initially thought the girl was being cruel or facetious when she approached him to ask about Dungeons and Dragons. She had looked like the kind of girl to do that—pretty and blonde with her pink blouse tucked into a pleated skirt that went past her knees. She looked like her brother with her perfect smile—but her eyes had been just cold enough, bored enough that he realized the chances of this being a lie were slim.

“But…” he says, “she makes me want to be brave.”

Elijah nods, wiping at his face.

“Good answer, Munson,” he says, standing.

He walks away and when Eddie doesn’t follow, he calls back and motions for Eddie to follow.

vi.

Jonathan Byers corners Elijah the next day with some crazy story about Steve Harrington’s party and a creature in the woods.

What the fuck, Eddie thinks—

“It’s a lead,” Elijah acknowledges. He doesn’t smile at Jonathan but he reaches down to ruffle his hair.

Jonathan blinks up at Elijah with wide eyes—and Eddie feels… he isn’t sure what to call the knot in his stomach.

“Elijah—” Eddie begins to say.

“Meet me here after school,” Elijah orders both of them. “We’re going monster hunting.”

vii.

“What the fuck,” Eddie says, peering at the gooey opening in the side of a tree.

viii.

“If that thing ate my sister, then I’m going to fucking kill it,” Elijah says.

“We have to smart about this,” Jonathan says and Eddie thinks he’s starting to like him more and more—every party needs a voice of reason and Eddie’s internal compass is pointing him straight to whatever Elijah wants—

“No,” he hisses. “I’m tired of playing nice.”

…

..

.

Kathleen Thompson

oi.

Kathy Finley was born and raised in Hawkins.

She attended the same church since childhood (or at least she used to), she married her high school sweetheart, and popped out two beautiful children that she sent to attend the same school she did.

Kathy Thompson tried her best—that’s all she ever did. She failed more than she succeeded, and she cried more than she smiled—but she loved her children. 

i.

(On September 8, 1979 Kathy is woken by screaming—

She finds her daughter cradled in her son’s arms, the water was so red that it looks like something from a horror movie.)

ii.

Kathy isn’t stupid.

Her kids are weird. She loves them—but she isn’t blind.

Elijah has always been a little strange. He’s always been helpful for a child his age, but he also knows just a little too much, always says things a little too honestly. And Tammy is not the same girl she used to be—

But she’s still Kathy’s daughter.

iii.

(Kathy has dinner with her friend. John works late. Elijah is with his teammates.

Tammy disappears.)

iv.

Three days after Tammy disappears, Joyce Byers shows up at Kathleen's door with stories of strange happenings and a handful of Christmas Lights.

Kathy invites her inside.

v.

“What is this?”

Kathy looks back at her husband at the door, looking at the wall that Joyce and her had graffitied with letters and Christmas lights.

“Joyce has a similar set up at her house,” Kathy explains, “it helps her speak with Will.”

“Oh,” John Thompson says.

Kathy adds, “It works—if that helps.”

“Ah,” John says, already moving to help his wife hang another bundle of lights.

vi.

“So,” John says, “monsters?”

Kathy and Joyce nod.

vii.

“Joyce,” Hopper warns.

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Joyce chides. “This is Kathy and her husband, John, they are perfectly nice people with a missing daughter, they deserve to be here.”

“Nice to meet you,” John says, reaching a hand out for Hopper to shake. The police chief looks at the hand and makes a face. John steadfastly refuses to drop the hand.

Joyce sighs and glares at Hopper until he finally cracks—his hackles raised like a wet tomcat.

…

..

.

Henry Creel

oi.

(“Tammy?” Eleven whispers into the static.

A pause. Hesitant. A fluttering heartbeat—

.

.

.

“Tamar,” Henry answers.)