Chapter Text
She's falling,
falling,
falling...
she's drowning, liquid rushes into her nose and ears, stings her eyes and lungs, further she plunges into unknown depths. She opens her mouth to scream, but the sound is washed out as water fills her lungs.
She's dying,
dying...
Suddenly she breaks through the surface and she gasps deeply, coughs as each merciful lungful of air brings with it a deep, stinging ache. She's kneeling in a puddle, her body drenched, cold and trembling, her hair dripping.
There's a whimper.
She blinks rapidly as she tries to open her eyes through the rivulets streaming from the locks of hair plastered to her face.
Everything is black.
She's in the Void.
"Please, help me..." the hoarse voice begs," ... please..."
Every hair on Eleven's body stands on end.
No.
It can't be.
Eleven raises her head as she hastily shoves her soaked hair from her face, her eyes widen in disbelief when she sees Billy approximately a few yards ahead of her. He's on his hands and knees and he raises his bowed head to meet her gaze. While she can't spot any immediate harm, he appears exhausted. There's grime smeared and smuged across his face and clothing, his hair is in matted clumps, his once tanned skin is washed out and there's deep, grey hollows beneath his eyes.
He looks like he's on the brink of death.
"I'm trapped," he sobs, it's a heavy, broken sound, "... help me..."
Eleven wakes trembling with a startled gasp and tears stinging her eyes. These nightmares always feel so real.
She blinks, wipes away the stray tear that falls down her cheek and stares with a baited numbness at the static of the auxiliary station on the television set.
She didn't do that... did she? Her powers disappeared last summer, she couldn't have... could she?
Billy's pleas for help play again in her mind as harrowing memories from the battle at the Starcourt mall come back to her, the way the monster had pierced his body, the horrific way he fell to the ground, limp and lifeless, the awful scream that left Max's mouth as Billy laid in the growing puddle of his own blood.
She's dreamed of the Void once before. She was in Chicago, listening to Hopper's apology over the radio.
Her restless gaze is drawn back to the static screen of the television, and she makes a decision.
She walks into the area that's used as a kitchen to grab the dish towel from the oven. What could be the worse that happens if she checks- she comes out feeling like a fool because her powers are gone, and she's sitting on the floor with a dish towel on her face, chasing literal dreams like a child and displacing her guilt and shame? She sits down in front of the entertainment set, and after a deep, steadying breath, she raises the rag to her eyes and fastens it behind her head.
She closes her eyes beneath the fabric, listens to the static being emitted from the speakers of the tv.
It couldn't have just been a dream. She's had nightmares about Billy before, but they're always about his death, always at the mall. This wasn't about him dying, he was reaching out, pleading, calling for help.
The static grows louder, drowns out her thoughts.
Was it just a dream?
Her eyes flutter open to the darkness.
What if it wasn't a dream?
"Hello?" She calls out. She takes a step forward, the water ripples. She's here, in the Void.
This isn't a dream.
What does that mean?
"Jane..."
Eleven's eyes widen, chills run down her spine with a shiver. Her breath catches in her throat as her heart thrums away madly in her chest. Slowly, she turns around.
Billy looks exactly the same as he did in her not-quite-a-dream. His eyes hold a worn sort of weariness to them, but there's a pleading spark as a few stray tears roll down his face. What startles her the most, however, is the webbed, knotted scars that are exposed by the torn fabric of his shirt.
"I don't know how to get out of here," he says, voice small in the vast, echoing void they currently inhabit.
Tears sting Eleven's eyes as she tries to wrap her mind around the unfolding situation. Has Billy been trapped and alone this whole time?
Can she save him this time?
"Please, Jane... help me..." His voice is thin, hoarse, and she wonders how long ago he screamed it out of use.
She has to try. She can't just leave him here, not when he's so close. Pushing her own fears aside, she swallows thickly and blinks her tears away.
"Wh-Where, Where are you?" She asks, voice wet and shaking and she doesn't sound as brave or confident as she wishes, staring down the monster felt less daunting and emotionally draining than this.
She steps back as the environment around him begins to spawn. Wooden floors, the edges of a rug with a, no, the recliner placed at the corner. Behind him, a wall emerges, the one that borders her bedroom.
"You're in my house." She states, stunned, but it's not her house, not really. There's thick, black, vein-like roots sprawled across the floor and up the wall.
He's in the Upside Down.
"Stay." She says.
She tears away the makeshift blindfold and tosses it aside as she stands and walks briskly into her room. She pauses just long enough to eyeball a rough estimate of Billy's location on the other side of the wall before she sits herself on the floor. For just a brief moment, she fears Billy may be stuck there forever, fears her powers haven't returned, or at the very least, haven't fully returned, but she quickly pushes that aside as she closes her eyes and raises her hands, fingers splayed and palms facing the wall.
She breathes in deeply.
-!! [☣︎] !!-
Hopper stares, mouth gapping and in shock, as he cuts off the ignition to his Blazer. His blood runs cold at the light filtering through the closed up blinds and curtains flickers in and out arrythmically. He unholsters his gun and bursts through the front door. He looks around wildly, all the electronics in the cabin have been thrown into chaos.
"El?" He calls out, his own voice lost to the loud ringing in his ears. "Eleven where are you?"
He notes the discarded dish towel laying randomly on the floor, half folded on itself, and Eleven's bedroom door knocked ajar.
"Eleven?" He asks, uncertainty replacing force in his tone as he enters her bedroom gun first.
Of all the things that had flashed through his mind the moment he pulled up to the cabin, nothing came close to what he stumbles on to- Billy Hargrove on the floor, clinging to Eleven like a lifeline and that mucus-esque slime trailing along the floor from him to the wall, and blood dripping from Eleven's nose with her hands out as she seals the portal shut to the Upside Down.
With adrenaline coursing through his veins and his mind in survival mode, Hopper acts without thinking. His first instinct is to get the shit up off the floor, there's no telling what unspeakable horrors it may contain. The first thing he does is grab Billy and drag him into the bathroom, although it's more like manhandling than guiding, Billy doesn't yet seem fully aware of his surroundings or what's happening. Being forced to move quicker than what his legs are currently capable of, Billy trips and half stumbles, half slumps into the tub of the shower. Hopper leaves him there as he turns on the faucet, first to wash off his hands, then he switches it over to the shower head.
It isn't until Hopper's washing the clothes Eleven changed out of in the kitchen sink that he comes down from his adrenaline high and the severity of the situation fully sinks in.
"Jesus Christ." He says somberly, as he stops rubbing dish soap into the ruined shorts.
Billy Hargrove, the boy who died nearly sixteen months ago, is in their bathroom, in their shower. Hopper came home to find Eleven closing a portal to the Upside Down from her bedroom. He turns back to look at El, who is standing at the threshold of the kitchen, as if to wordlessly ask 'is this really happening' but Eleven has her arms crossed over her chest and she's slouched forward, giving the appearance that she's holding herself, and she keeps wiping futility at the persistent stray tears that keep rolling down her face. She meets Hopper's questioning gaze with red rimmed eyes and trembling lips. Turning off the faucet, Hopper abandons his task to console her.
"Hey, hey..." he says gently as he wraps his arms around her, pulling her into a hug. The comforting embrace is all it takes for El's walls of reservation to fall down and she openly cries into Hopper, unble to make sense of the rush of emotions that have suddenly overtaken her.
There is so much going on, a new uncertainty has just literally crawled its way into the walls of their home, and Hopper's not sure what tomorrow, or even tonight, will hold. He has no protocol, no rules to fall back on for this, no structure or regime, it's just sit back and act accordingly to the events that unfold and it fills him with fear. But this, the small girl in his arms, he knows this, he knows how to fix this. If he can get her to calm down, he can get some answers from her, and then it can be the two of them against the daunting uncertainty that awaits them.
"What's going on with you, huh? What's wrong?" He asks gently as he rubs comforting circles between her shoulders. He knows she can't possibly be this shaken by this fresh, new Upside Down hell.
"H-H He- He's aliv-ve." She chokes out between sobs.
Oh.
Of course.
The months that followed the Fourth of July in 1985 were long. El had frequently woken up screaming from nightmares. It got to the point where she became scared of bedtime, she'd either stay up late or beg to sleep in bed with Hopper. Hopper himself had lost sleep worrying over and trying to accommodate her, and the whole situation had worn his patience. While he knew he hadn't been around to fight the new monster, he didn't understand why this one in particular had gotten to El so badly. She had eventually admitted to him it wasn't the Mind Flayer itself, but Billy's death she was having trouble with, which confused Hopper more. El had seen death, from Benny to Barb, and had even killed. He couldn't understand why she was so hung up about a boy that, as far as Hopper was aware, she hadn't even interacted with until he was flayed? Then, before school had started, he had learned from Joyce who was told by Will that El had made some kind of connection with Billy, that she had used her powers to get into his mind, that she had saw something, something she still refuses to share with the rest of The Party. Whatever it was she saw, it changed her, and she was able to use it to break Billy free from the Mind Flayer's control.
Hopper had learned about the boy sacrificing himself hours after Owens' men had extracted Joyce, Murray and himself from the secret Russian lab, but that was the extent of it. And El had been mad at him for several following days, moody and fitful, yelling about how he and Joyce should've closed the gate faster, and of course she had eventually calmed down and the nightmares began soon after but at the time,nHopper thought she was scared because she had lost her powers, and essentially, felt as though she had lost control, or agency even. She was always the hero, but not this time. It wasn't until Joyce shared that extra bit of info with him that Hopper realized El carried the guilt of the boy's death. Her powers quit working, so he sacrificed himself to save her but El didn't see it as a sacrifice. She felt as though she had gotten him killed and she needed someone to blame other than herself because that's a massive burden for a child to carry, so she lashed out at him instead.
And now, after all that, after months of mourning and finally beginning the process of healing and moving on, Billy is back.
"It's okay," he says as he continues to rub her back, "it's okay."
It's a lot to try and take in and process, to say the least.
"Hey," he says, leaning back just enough to catch her chin with one of his hands and tilting her head upwards, "we can handle this, okay? We can handle this together. We're a team, right?"
She sniffs, nods.
"Not Stupid." She says, voice wet and lips trembling.
Hopper smiles.
"There's my girl."
He cups her face, wipes gently his thumbs across the wet steaks of tears that roll down her cheeks.
"Hey, I'm going to check on him, okay? I want you to splash your face and drink some water. Then we'll figure out what to do next."
"Teamwork." She says as she rubs the back of her hand across her face.
"Right. Teamwork."
Hopper hesitates outside the bathroom.
He has no idea what to expect.
What if this isn’t Billy? What if it’s some kind of imposter, a new trick from the Mind Flayer to try to get to El and extract its revenge or grand scheme or whatever it’s been after this whole time? He died sixteen months ago. There was a funeral. And sure, Will also nearly had a funeral, but the circumstances are completely different. Billy didn’t go missing and his body magically turned up. He died, and all the children and teens bore witness to his death. By all accounts, it doesn’t add up.
And there’s El’s powers, why would they suddenly kick in? Why now? Right as Billy suddenly turns up? Everything about this screams nefarious agenda to Hopper, but what is he supposed to do? Kill Billy all over again? He can’t act until he knows what’s going on, and he can’t know what’s going on until he opens that door...
He takes a slow, steady breath.
Once that door is open, there’s no going back. He may have to make some tough decisions, and deal with the dire fallout of the consequences, but when has this whole Upside Down situation not demanded the absolute most from him and then some? This is just another chapter in the saga, right?
Except he’s just so tired.
These people, they’re not strangers.
And the town is still reeling from the aftermath of last July.
Hopper takes one last moment to fully bear the weight of opening the door, the possibilities, the hell he may be releasing.
The door slowly folds open.
Billy, still fully clothed, is now sitting in the tub beneath the spray of water with his legs pulled up to his chest, his arms wrapped around his knees and his head bowed, with his forehead resting against his forearms. There’s steam billowing from the shower and the parts of Billy’s skin that are exposed are a glaring red.
“Christ.” Hopper says as he crosses the short distance to the shower.
“Don’t.” Billy says as he turns and grabs Hopper’s forearm before he can adjust the temperature of the water.
“Kid, you’re boiling yourself in here.” Hopper says matter-of-factly, like when he’s having to explain something to El.
Billy says nothing but continues to look at Hopper, silently pleading, and there’s at least three different emotions on the boy’s face, all of them different flavors of fear and uncertainty and it looks like maybe he was, is currently, crying but it’s impossible to tell with the shower running and then he remembers.
“It likes it cold, right?” Hopper says, feeling the tension in his shoulders fade away.
“That’s what,” with the index finger of his free hand, he gestures to the tub, “that’s what this is
about?”
Billy lets go of Hopper’s wrist to wrap his arms around himself.
“I wanted... to make sure...”
“Yeah, Will had a pretty hard time afterwards. Joyce bought him an electric blanket, I think he still uses it.”
Hopper frowns as he looks down at Billy. He knows that even the youngest of what the children refer to as The Party are now teenagers, and that the oldest are coming into young adulthood, but he still thinks of them as being so young, still children. Hopper can’t help but look at Billy curled up on the bottom of the bathtub and think of how small he looks, broken, vulnerable even, like a scared boy.
“Hey,” Hopper grunts as he crouches down on the floor to bring himself eye level with Billy, “you’re safe now kid. I don’t know how, but you made it back to our side.”
Billy nods, his breathing stutters, and now Hopper is certain he is crying.
“Look, why don’t you go ahead and get cleaned up while you’re in there, yeah? I’m gonna... I’m gonna have to throw your clothes, just as a safety precaution, but I should have some old clothes laying around here. Once you’re showered and dressed we’ll get you something to eat, okay?”
Billy nods and Hopper copies the gesture.
“Alright. I’m going to give you some privacy now, okay?”
Another wordless nod and Hopper stands, then draws the shower curtain shut. He closes the bathroom door behind him, then walks to the kitchen to check on El. He’s surprised to see she’s busying herself in the kitchen by making peanut butter sandwiches.
Well, that’s one less thing off the list.
A phone call to Dr. Sam Owens and trip to his bedroom brings the total of items done to three; Billy now has a change of clothes waiting for him on the bathroom counter and an appointment at the reopened lab first thing tomorrow morning. Once Owens can confirm that there’s nothing going on, that Billy isn’t an imposter, or carrying some Upside Down hell spawn inside him, or is no longer host to an inter dimensional being with a god complex, then Hopper can finally relax. Now they just have to get through dinner, and the ever yawning uncertainty of the night that lays ahead.
Easy peasy, as Bob the Brain would say.
Hopper sighs as he renters the kitchen; as much as he hates the panic, he thinks he does his best work during these types of situations. He became a police officer for a reason, after all. There’s just no other way to get that feeling, knowing people are scared and looking to you for answers, for relief, for hope and guidance, like the beacon of a lighthouse in a storm. The hard part is learning when and how to turn it off.
As he passes by Eleven, he gently grabs her head and places a quick kiss on top of her head before opening the fridge and taking out a beer.
“Teamwork.” He says, can raised, then he pops the tab open and takes a sip.
“We’re going to the lab tomorrow?” El asks, now that they have a still moment between them.
“I just want to make sure he isn’t... carrying anything. We can’t afford to be stupid. Especially if we can prevent it. We know what to look for this time.”
El nods solemnly, while she hadn’t been around for that particular fiasco, she became well acquainted with the culmination, and the subsequent face off well below the lab with the Mind Flayer itself.
The face off that led to it seeking revenge the following summer.
Sometimes El wonders if things would’ve been better for everyone if she had stayed in the lab, and never made contact with the faceless beast.
The creak of floorboards cause both El and Hopper to look up and see Billy standing at the threshold of the kitchen, there's something about him that looks out of place, either the loose fitting shirt and jeans that were popular back when Hopper was skipping class to smoke behind the bleachers and cruising the town to pick up a date, but a far cry from the near skin tight clothing Billy normally wears, or maybe it's the damp curls sticking to his neck and face that makes El think of their fight in the public pool's locker room, or maybe it's the heavy, empty look in his eyes punctuated by the grey bags beneath them, or the way he's holding himself, back slouched and arms crossed over his chest, like he's an unwanted invader.
Intially, Billy's gaze hovers somewhere just above the floorboards, and then he forces himself to look upwards, to meet El's eyes. She returns his gaze eagerly, though she's hesitant, she's not sure what to expect, from him or herself. For a moment, they simply look at one another with revered silence, an acknowledgment of something unspoken.
"You found me." Billy says softly, his tone is a mix of quiet awe and gratitude and something else El can't quite place.
Her mouth twists to the side and she bites the inside of her cheek, she can feel heat rising to her face and tears stinging her eyes.
What is she supposed to say?
"I thought you were gone." She confesses. It's the truth, but not all of it. and she whispers because she doesn't trust her voice and her vision blurs as she feels her lips tremble.
Something passes through Billy's expression, something deep, something unreadable.
"I did too." He whispers back only to keep from breaking the solemn atmosphere.
El stands there, in the kitchen with her arms at her side, holding her breath as she futilely tries to keep her fading grasp on her composure. She feels like she's back at the mall again, exposed and vulnerable, weak, helpless as emotions she doesn't have words for swell in her chest, become nearly too much to hold and she gasps, unable to hold her breath or hold back the sob as tears begin to roll down her cheeks.
Billy's expression softens, though he looks uncertain and a little uncomfortable.
She's not going to do this, El thinks, she's spent the last sixteen months crying to herself in her quiet, private moments, mourning and carrying with her the things she'd never get to say, things like 'I'm sorry' and 'thank you'. The first time around, it took her reaching out to him, and she'll reach again and again until he learns and accepts that she will always be there at his side, the way the others have been for her. She swiftly crosses the kitchen to close the space between them to wrap her arms around him and as she hugs him and cries, she realizes she has no idea what to say, how to put everything into words that she's been feeling for the past near year and a half.
"I-I'm, I'm-m s-s sorry," She stammers out. It's everything and not enough all at once. It's her confession, it's her guilt, it's wishing she could have done more, wishing her powers didn't quit, wishing she sensed him in the Upside Down sooner, wishing she could've stopped him from getting flayed. If only she were stronger, if only she had fought harder, if only she'd notice sooner, if only, if only, if only...
Billy, still looking uncomfortable and uncertain even more so in the embrace, awkwardly places on hand on El's back between her shoulders.
"I'm sorry too." He mumbles. It's his final words, echoed. He's sorry about the people he hurt, from the townspeople he got possessed to the kids he'd fought... Mike and Max, and Jane. He's sorry he couldn't have done more, sorry he couldn't fight the thing. He did what he could but it wasn't enough, it never is. And he's sorry he ever got caught up in this. Would any of this have happened if he'd stayed home that night?
Hating to her those two words repeated, those words that filled her nightmares, she wraps her arms around him a little tighter.
"You saved me." She says as a rebuttal, voice a little calmer though the tears haven't stopped. So often since that summer, the final exchange with Kali has echoed in her head.
'Your friends can't save you.'
'No, but I can save them.'
But Billy had saved her. Once he broke free, he had turned on the thing and fought back, buying just enough time for Hopper and Joyce to shut the gate and save El. If he had not been there, if he had not defied it...
"You saved me too." Billy says, and there's a small tremble to his voice. All his life, Billy's been fighting. The one person he thought he could trust had walked out on him when he was just eight years old, and Billy learned the if he wanted to survive, he could only rely on himself. Everyone has always seen what they wanted to see in him, and he fed into it by creating this persona, this mask for himself. He wasn't allowed to trust. Trust makes you vulnerable, makes you weak. Trust is something that could be exploited. So Billy kept people at a distance, and he could tell himself people didn't approach him not because there was something wrong, broken in him, but because he kept them away. And then here comes this girl, ripping right through those carefully constructed walls, ripping through his mind. She saw past his mask, and she didn't run. She saw him, really saw him, and she didn't leave. And she's just done it a second time, and has given him a second chance, a second life. She saw him begging for help, and she helped him. When all his life, everyone has always consistently turned away, Jane offered her hand.
"Thank you." El says, voice gentle and the tears slowing.
Billy's not certain he really saved her, he was the one who put her in that situation to begin with. Still, he gives her a small smile, it's the best he can manage at the moment. He's drained, from the hell of last summer, from the hell he's been living in the last sixteen months, from crossing dimensions, from this whole highly emotionally charged exchange, from knowing he's really only just begun this battle.
But he's not gone, and this is only the beginning.
"Thank you." Billy says back, and he can't believe he's made it through this whole conversation and it's now when his eyes start to sting and his throat feels tight. They're two words, two simple words, but they bare so much weight behind them; he feels she knows what it is he's trying to say.
El looks up at him with a smile, then she laughs softly. They have essentially shared three phrases between them: I'm sorry. You saved me. Thank you.
Breaking the embrace, El wipes away at her face, and Billy clears his throat.
"How are you feeling?" Hopper asks tentatively. He's not entirely sure what just transpired between the two, but there's no doubting it was profound.
"Better," Billy says, then hesitates, "... human."
Hopper forces a partially amused smile while El visibly winces.
"Here." Hopper says, sliding the plate of sandwiches forward, "just... go slow or you'll make yourself sick."
Hopper watches as Billy hesitates before stepping into the kitchen.
There's something there, something Hopper can't quite put his finger on. There's the obvious and expected skittishness about him, WIll had been the same for months afterwards. He had good days and bad days, days where he jumped at shadows and flinched if someone spoke too loudly, and while Billy currently looks like he's ready to dart at any given moment, there's something else to his movements, something that reminds Hopper of the feral cats that El persistently tries to befriend despite the fact they'll only come within a few yards of her, hiss, then run off. It's that feral-like quality he sees in Billy's stiff restrained movements as he approaches the table and quickly glances between Hopper and Eleven, like the offer of food is a secret ambush.
Hopper supposes there's no telling what all he had to survive in the Upside Down, obviously his natural instincts are something to contend with, otherwise he wouldn't be here, standing in their kitchen, eating a crudely cut triangle half of a sandwich in a nauseating two bites. He'll just have to hope and assume the boy will relax as he gets reacquainted with life on this side of the gate.
"Slow, slow." Hopper says, it's more a command than a warning, and El watches on with equal measure of disgust and amusement.
There’s a part of Billy, the part that kept him going for the last sixteen months, that bristles at the Chief’s tone. He’s never cared much for authority, in his experience, anyone who’s ever clawed their way up to the top in order to be in charge of other people just like the abuse of power… but he’s tired, and he’s safe and he’s starving and he never thought something as simple and bland as a peanut butter sandwich would be such a godsend, would nearly bring tears to his eyes with its simplicity and comfort. It’s such a small thing, one of many Billy had overlooked until he was thrown into that dark, cold Dead Place. And maybe he should slow down, but even before the crash outside of the abandoned steel mill, Billy was a hedonist, always chasing one pleasure, then the next, consuming all it had to give until he drained it of all its worth, then he’d move on to something else. Parties. Girls. Drinking. Exercise. All one rush or another. The only difference is this time he’s trying to fill the empty void in his stomach and not the metaphorical emptiness in his life.
Void.
He thought he knew emptiness. Thought he knew pain. Though he knew it like the taste of blood on his tongue, like the sharp piercing ache of a careless inhale of bruised ribs, thought he knew it like the long sleepless nights full of what ifs and what could have beens that chase sleep away. He looks through the veil of cigarette smoke out into the dark woods and shifts so he can feel the wall against his back beneath the warm glow of the porch light. Sixteen months he spent in the dark, no sign of light, no sign of day, no sign of hope. It was a new kind of loneliness.
“Got some questions for you, kid.”
Billy startles at Hopper’s voice, turns his head to give a guarded look towards the man sitting on the top step smoking his own cigarette.
“I don’t have any answers.”
Billy doesn’t mean it in a smartass way, not entirely. It’s just that nothing’s made sense for a long time now, not sense the car crash and even though he’s out of that Dead Place, the hell has started here, at home, at the mill and a part of him fears that the morning will burn.
“That place,” Hopper asks, his voice gentle, steady, “you were in it? This whole time?”
Billy’s gaze goes back out to the night. Even under the light, the darkness feels too close, ever present, suffocating. He brings his hand to his lips with force, sucking a deep breath in through his cigarette as the feeling of trying to scream as a tendril made of dead flesh forces its way down his throat comes back, as though he were there again, as though it were happening again.
“Yeah,” Billy says, smoke spilling from his lips as he speaks and there’s a tremor in his voice like there is in his hands.
Everything in the Dead Place felt like that: slick with slime that was viscous, as though the Dead Place itself was trying to cling to him, trying to pull and hold him down until he became one with the rotting corpse of Hawkins, the Dead Place seemingly stuck in a state of decay.
Like the Shadow.
The one made of Flesh.
“How’d… and how’d you-?”
“I don’t-“ Billy closes his eyes against the wave of exhaustion and heat that suddenly rises to his face. He’s over it, over this feeling of helplessness, of vulnerablity.
There’s a fear in the unknown, and he’s only just realizing that maybe getting out of there wasn’t enough.
“I don’t know.” He says, voice quiet, nearly a whisper. When he opens his eyes again, he’s regained his composure though his eyes are downcast towards his lap and when he takes another drag off his cigarette, it’s slower this time.
Hopper sighs, drops his own gaze and the conversation before looking out into the woods.
Will.
It’ll take the kid some time to adjust. Will was still trying to recover even a year later, really only ever seemed to get any peace the first time they thought they closed the gate. All that aside, Hopper isn’t sure how Billy survived in there this whole time. The first time Hopper went into the Upside Down, it was with a hazmat suit. The second time, he tried to take precautions but ended up waking up in the lab getting hosed down and disinfected. And that’s just from the environment, not all the… the… things that are in there.
Then again, Will had managed to survived on his own a whole week.
… but he was infected.
Hopper resist the urge to shift or fidget, resists the urge to turn and look at Billy, to really try and look at him, as though the sign of interdimensional infection were somehow present…
… he wanted the shower hot. That has to count for something, right?
-!! [☣︎] !!-
Eleven sits backwards on the couch, peering through the window at Hopper and Billy, waiting anxiously for the two men to come back inside. There’s a restlessness in her, one she doesn’t quite understand but she’s eager to put it to ease.
As it turns out, their presence does little to calm her. Even when her and Hopper go through the motions of turning on the television and watching tv as they snack on peanut butter sandwich triangles. Even when she showers and gets ready for bed, there’s that feeling in her stomach, the one that feels like the air around the television when it’s turned off, charged and warm and it makes the hair on her arm stand on end. Even when she asks if she can sleep in the living room with Billy. Even as she gets comfortable beneath her blanket with Billy in her sight and Hopper snoring from his room in the silence of the night, the uncertainty rests heavy in her body.
She knows this isn’t something light, what happened here. And while she’s excited that Billy is back, relieved beyond words, she can’t help but fear what lies beyond, can’t help but feel this is some sort of omen, because good things just don’t happen without a price, it seems, and she’s not naive enough to think that everything will just magically be okay now that he’s back. So many lives were lost last summer. There’s so many families still grieving, the town itself is still healing. Everyone lost someone in the accident at Starcourt mall. But there’s a part of her, a very selfish part of her, that’s grateful that Billy is the one that made it back.
She just fears the how.
And the why.
“Go to sleep.”
His voice is a quiet murmur in the dark, but it’s enough to pull Eleven from her thoughts.
“What?” She asks… how can he tell she isn’t asleep?
“Can feel your eyes on me.”
She feels her face grow warm in the dark. She doesn’t say anything, but shifts to a more comfortable position and tugs her blanket further up her body before closing her eyes.
-!! [☣︎] !!-
There wasn’t a scream. There was no yell or holler. There was no plea for help or a fit of rage. Just Billy suddenly jolting up with a sharp gasp and Eleven is on her feet in seconds, lights flickering as flashes of faceless creatures and monsters made of familiar faces swarm her mind. Like a domino effect, Hopper is stumbling into the living room, gun drawn.
“What? What is it? What’s going on?” He asks blearily, voice husky and words slurred.
Nothing.
Billy wants to just say ‘nothing’, it was just a dream, but it was more than that. He was in that place again. He was screaming for help again. But no one could hear him again. And he doesn’t know where he is, the couch is warm from his body heat and while it’s worn it’s soft compared to the cold, wet damp of that unforgiving place and where is he, how did he get here? And then he sees her.
Jane.
Seven feet.
He closes his eyes, exhales, feels the heat in his face as tears sting his eyes and he’s just so god damn exhausted.
Realizing there’s no actual threat, Hopper sighs and leans heavily against the nearest wall.
“Okay,” he says in recognition. “You’re okay.”
And he is but he isn’t. Just like he’s safe but he isn’t. And he tries to fight it, tries to will the surge of emotions back to whatever depths they’d welled up from, just like he tries to will the heat in his face to go away, tries to physically hold back his tears and it’s all just so much, too much.
“It’s okay.” Hopper says in the same low voice and the lights have quit flickering and Eleven is sitting in the recliner, her silhouette slumped and defeated looking against the dull moonlight coming in through the curtains and Billy doesn’t feel like he’s in control of himself as the tears start to fall warm down his face, warm like the anger and hatred in his chest.
He hates this, hates every bit of this. He’s still disoriented from the nightmare-that-was-a-memory, is still half asleep. He’s exhausted in a way sleep can’t fix, he feels so weak and vulnerable and he’s back here, back on the other side but he’ll never be back, there’s no going back and maybe he’s been fighting for so long he doesn’t know how to stop. And he knows he’s just tired, half delirious and jumpy but how is supposed to sleep when everything comes back to haunt him in his dreams?
It only takes a few minutes for him to regain control. In those few minutes, Hopper moves to occupy the recliner and Eleven joins Billy on the couch after getting a glass of water.
Everything is tense after that.
If he had any energy left in him, Billy would chide himself for being so selfish, distrusting everyone like that. But all he can do now is lay back against the couch with his head tilted as he watches the light slowly shift across the ceiling as the minutes tick by. He feels empty, emotionally, mentally, physically. His brain tells him not to sleep, but he’s too drained to stay alert. Instead he listens to Hopper’s deep and steady breathing, the way it periodically gets disrupted.
“Go to sleep.” He whispers softly.
There’s no answer, instead there’s a simultaneous creak and shift in weight beside him, and then he feels Jane place her head against his shoulder.