Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

He never liked looking at his reflection, even before everything that happened. He was always changing, growing and morphing in such a way that he barely recognized himself anymore. His hair wasn't his own, acne covered his face, he was better off ignoring what he saw in the mirror.

Now he avoids it all together.

Because it wasn't his reflection that scared him anymore.

He must be going insane.

Because what the mirror showed him, and what his eyes saw…

They did not match.

He stood in front of a still lake, peaceful and tranquil. His eyes saw the lush green grass, the deep blue of the water, the bright sky and fluffy clouds.

The lake showed black rock, red skies and bleeding clouds.

He avoids anything that reflects after that. Avoids looking her in the eyes too.

Because he sees it in her eyes as well.

He wonders if that's how she sees the world.

"Bathroom break!"

Steve watches as Billy barely stops himself from tugging out a fistful of his own hair. "We just got on the road."

Max frowns. "Yeah, two hours ago. Bathroom break!"

Billy hits his forehead against the side of the RV they had commandeered. Next to him, Nancy stifles a giggle as the younger kids openly smile.

It had been a little over a year since most of them had gotten trapped in this empty mirror world. Steve had woken up at his school desk to an empty classroom, wondering how long he had been asleep and why the teacher never woke him up. Worse than that, he never actually fell asleep. It was more like he blinked and suddenly everything was different.

He met Nancy a few minutes later, a year younger than him also going to his middle school. She was frantic, as was he, but they decided to go to the elementary school because her little brother should be there and she needed to check.

They met Jonathan on the way, a freshman who was also checking on his little brother. Steve didn't expect to find them, but he was surprised to find a group of four kids wondering the halls all alone.

The reunion was sweet, at least.

They all went to their respective homes, found them empty, and then slept over at Steve's given it was the biggest. None of them wanted to be alone, and most of them couldn't really feed themselves, so it was probably better this way.

Ellen, or El, showed up the next day, waiting outside his house like she knew they were in there, somehow. No one had ever seen her before, and she didn't speak the best English, but she was young and they weren't going to just leave her alone. She wasn't very forgoing with where she came from or her backstory, but it didn't matter much when the world around them had gone quiet.

El suggested almost immediately after they met that they leave Hawkins, and Steve might've been the only one who noticed her worry when she said it. Nancy and Jonathan, on the other hand, thought it would be smarter to head to a city anyway, since there's more chance of finding people and getting food. Steve noticed that it wasn't until they were hours away from Hawkins (a long walk, they weren't comfortable with stealing a car yet) that she finally relaxed.

Half a year of the same passed before they found themselves in California, passing a random gas station only to hear two kids bickering inside. Max and Billy joined them after that, the only other people they've seen since this whole thing started.

Since then, there's just been… nothing. A whole lot of nothing.

Steve's never really noticed how still the world is without life. The air is silent, void of the chitter of bugs and birds. The only sound they ever hear is either from themselves, the engine of the car they took, or the wind.

(It never rains here. Never.)

On the plus side, if they're lucky they get a car that can play music, and Jonathan has a whole extra backpack he carries around full of music tapes. He, Billy, and Steve will switch off between carrying them when they get too heavy, because they can't just leave them. They're the only way they ever hear someone's else's voice, one not from their group. It's almost a ritual at this point, gathering around a working player and listening to the tapes they have, playing them in a cycle that they could never get bored of.

If Steve's being honest with himself, they've all gone a little insane.

Of course they have, they're practically the last people on earth. Jonathan's the oldest of them all at 15, Nancy the youngest of the older group at 13, but they have six 9 year olds to watch over, and there's only four older kids to do it. They're outnumbered and honestly these kids can barely take care of themselves, they can barely take care of themselves. It's hard enough if it was just the older four, but a group of ten kids, more than half of them unable to do more than the utmost basics?

That's not even considering the extreme isolation they're all experiencing, and whatever effects that's giving them, besides the obvious ones. Obvious being how affectionate everyone's coming, how they all sleep either in car seats or slumped over each other in some form of a puppy pile. How they can't stand each other but panic the moment one of them is out of sight for too long. It's… it's not good.

And El. Ellen. Was her name even Ellen? One of them said it and she nodded like that was it, and she responds to it, but her English hasn't gotten much better. Probably because she's learning from children. Either way, El freaks him out a little- eyes always miles away and ready to throw a fit the moment any of them suggest going back to Hawkins. Billy thinks that she may have some type of trauma or bad memories associated with the place, something Steve only half understands. Nancy agrees with him though, and Nancy's the smartest of all of them.

(Forget that he's homesick. Forget that he wants to see his home, his family again. A nine year old can't handle going back to the town she was found in and won't even explain why, won't even negotiate, and when Steve tries to get stern, tries to look her in the eye, all he sees is storms and lightning and he looks away.)

So yeah, a little insane.

"We should stop at any gas station we see anyway." Nancy reminded lightly. "You know, for food."

They had plenty, the world was their oyster and even after a year nothing ever seemed to spoil or rot. It's like it's frozen in time, just waiting for them. Steve went into a grocery store a few days ago and made shrimp for everyone! It was a little overdone but Steve had become the cook of the group and the seasoning mostly hid it.

Anyway, they had a RV stocked with food, but they had made a plan and it includes stopping at every station they remembered to, checking it thoroughly for anything that might be different, that might somehow explain the situation they're in. It never happened, but maybe one day.

Billy sighs his surrender and Jonathan turns off the interstate, stopping at the next gas station he finds. There's a fast food joint next door, and they split up, the other group checking for any already made food left behind.

That left Steve and Jonathan as the two checking the convenience store with three of the younger kids (Steve always went with either Billy or Jonathan, because he was the second youngest and one of the youngest teenagers always had to go with one of the older ones, even if it was by one year). Like normal, they let the kids go around and grab anything that looked decently edible and whatever sugar high treats they also wanted. Jonathan went to their small collection of other things, consisting of toothpaste and canteens, before giving up and grabbing water from the refrigerators instead.

Steve walked around, watching them all. Will and Max were huddled around a backpack, trying to figure out the best way to fill it with chocolate. He didn't see El.

Ignoring that little shot of panic, he walks over to the two kids he does see and crouches down. "That's a lot of chocolate."

He pretends like he doesn't sneak some too. Max eyes him warily, like she's seen through his facade. Will just grins at him wide and happy. "They have my favorite one." He pointed to it, joyful. "They don't have them, on the west coast. This is the first place I've found them!"

Steve smiles at Will's innocent joy at the smallest thing. "Are you just getting chocolate, or will you broaden your horizons?"

Max used to not know that saying, but Steve's used it enough that she's picked it up. "We can't take donuts with us." She argues. "They're messy."

Steve blinks. "There's more than just donuts here."

As one, the two look over at the food cooking at the counter, the staple of 7-11 stores. Max shivers just looking at it. "No."

"Fair enough." He says, because it's true. Out of all the older kids, he has the best chance of getting the kids to do things (which is funny, given the fact that the other three are actually siblings and he isn't, or maybe that's why it works-). They all look up to him for some reason, and unless they have a sibling, they all go to him first when something is wrong or they have a problem. He went from being a single child to kissing boo boos better and judging temperatures via hand to forehead very quickly, and that's not even starting to count silly arguments they have where they need a mediator or a decider. It's always Steve, never one of the others. They're biased apparently, like he isn't. He has a favorite, and it's Dustin. Obviously.

He should probably… look for El.

It takes him a minute to notice that she's not inside the store, and he realizes that there's an attached bathroom outside that she might've gone to. After telling Jonathan where he was going, he slips out of the convenience store and walks over to the bathroom. It's a single bathroom, gender neutral, and Steve knocks softly against the side. "El? You in there?"

He hears something moving inside, but no answer. El has always… scared him, if he's honest. The way she speaks and acts, foreign and strange and wise someway. The way her eyes always seem far away, always seem to see something theirs don't. The way she insists they never go back home, like she knows something they don't. It's silly, being scared of someone five years younger, being scared of a nine year old, but he is.

Something cracks in the bathroom, like she stepped on something breakable. Steve gets concerned. "El?"

Breathing. He can hear harsh breathing. He's considering breaking open the door when El finally says, "Steve?"

"Hey El." Steve was never the best with children, before all of this started. Tommy, his best friend, used to pick on younger kids and generally find them beyond annoying, and since Steve had no siblings he genuinely just didn't know how to deal with them. He's found that, though, over these several months, each one is different and they all need different things. El, normally, just needs an anchor. "Can you open the door for me?"

Silence. He hears wobbly footsteps before the door unlocks and it opens. El's tiny face appears from behind the door. Her hair had grown out a bit from its military cut, reaching just to her chin. Her eyes were wide and watery.

Blood dripped from a cut on her hand.

"Holy shi-" he glances behind her and saw the wreckage. The mirror in the bathroom had completely shattered, the ground was covered in shards of glass. Besides her hand El seemed fine, but the damage was severe. "Come here El, away from the glass."

El listens, the door closing behind her as she walks up to Steve. Surprisingly, when she reaches him, she goes limp, leaning against him. He squats down, wraps his arms around her. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay." He soothes, though he doesn't know what she's apologizing for. "It's fine, but El- why'd you break the mirror?"

He needed to go to the car and grab one of their first aid kits. He needed to tell Jonathan what happened. He needed to understand what happened. He needed a lot of things.

"You know." Was El's answer, as distant and vague as always. "We don't like mirrors."

We. We. Steve tilts his head down to look at her. Their eyes meet, and for the first time Steve can't make himself look away. It's terrible, what he sees. An endless storm, monsters he could never imagine. Something big, massive, walking up behind him.

El narrows her eyes, almost in defiance. Then she looks away.

Steve's heart is pounding. He can't stop himself. "El, you know what's going on, don't you?" They never speak of this to El, El never answers, but she's mentioned the mirrors, their reflections, and she's the only one to ever seem to notice it besides him. The others don't see the reflections that he sees. "Why won't you tell us?"

El is calm. Very calm for a child with a bleeding cut on her hand. That in itself is worrying. 

"There's a monster." El says, still not looking at him, like she's afraid if he sees it in her eyes the monster will notice him too. "It wants us to go back."

"Maybe she's just imagining things."

It's quiet, still. Night had fallen, a few hours ago. They had taken their latest car as far as it could go. They'd need to find a new one in the morning, or find gas, but they were fine for now.

Luckily, they had run out of gas in a town. Jonathan was able to park in a nearby hotel, and after rummaging in the back Nancy found keys to one of the larger suites. Steve glances over across the room - Max and El shared one of the beds, deep asleep. El's hand was wrapped in gauze, thankfully still white. Mike and Will slept on the other bed, Dustin sprawled along the foot of it. Lucas had taken the couch.

He turned back to the others. He and the other older kids sat around the table in the corner. There were only two seats, so Jonathan pulled over the couch's single seat and Nancy sat on the arm of it. There, they listened to his recounting of what happened to El.

"I… I don't think so." Steve wrings his hand, disagreeing with Billy. The other boy scared him a bit, it felt like he was hiding something. Whatever it was, Max knew and prodding for it made both of them angry, Billy almost violent with his. Maybe scared wasn't the right word, but wary. Maybe he has trauma too. "That's a lot of imagination to break a mirror, though."

Nancy looked worried, hand under her chin in thought. "She says there's a monster in Hawkins?" She wasn't skeptical, she was curious. Steve couldn't fault Billy, he hadn't known El in the beginning, how strange she was. "And that it wants us to go back there?"

"I know this sounds stupid." Jonathan finally speaks, looking nervous. "But everyone is gone, so I guess it's possible… what if El's right, and this monster brought us to this world to eat us or something?"

Billy scoffs before pausing, thinking it over. It's absurd, they all know, but they've been living in an empty world for almost a year now, nothing is really absurd anymore.

"El's been breaking mirrors for a while, now." Nancy blurts out, like a secret she's been holding. "I noticed it before we even left Hawkins."

Steve bit his lip, wringing his hands together. He's nervous, feels a bit bad for hiding it, but no, it's crazy- "Uh, when you guys look at reflections…"

They all stare at him. Steve flushes, looking down. He trusts them all, even Billy. They'd believe him, no matter what he says, but it's insane and he doesn't want to worry them, doesn't know why he sees it and no one else. No matter how mature he tries to be for the kids, he's still fourteen. He doesn't want them to think of him differently.

"You see it too?" Billy asks, voice soft. In the silence after his words, Steve's awareness tunes into the quiet breathing of the sleeping kids.

He nods, ducking his head. It feels shameful, almost. He doesn't know why. "Yeah."

"And you didn't tell us?"

His ears are red. Billy's voice holds only a little bit of bite- it's mostly passive, calm. Not disbelieving, though.

Nancy leans over, fingers brushing against his shoulder. He looks up. "What do you see?" She asks, eyes sharp. Voice serious. "In the reflections?"

He sucks in a sharp breath, tries to put it into words. "The sky is red." He starts. "The ground is black. It's always cloudy, there's a thunderstorm but there's never water."

Jonathan bites at his thumb. From what Steve knew of Jonathan Byers before, he never really talked to anyone, had friends. He was always reading whenever Steve saw him, or taking photos. He's always had the craziest ideas of what happened to them, due to the fantasy and sci-fi he would read. Steve can tell he's thinking something outlandish right now.

"In books and movies, uh-" Jonathan pauses like he wants to take what he said back, before realizing it's too late and continuing on. "Mirrors and reflections are used to show a different world or… maybe it's that?"

Nancy raises an eyebrow. "Or?"

Jonathan blushes. "Or… to show a secret. What's, like, hidden from our eyes."

Hidden from their eyes? Steve stares at his hands in thought. If the mirrors were showing a different dimension, that could make sense, but the idea that it's not showing a different dimension, but something hidden in theirs… "It's not just mirrors." He says. "It's everywhere. I see it in the water's reflection too- in lakes and stuff. I see it in El's eyes."

He doesn't see their reactions. Doesn't want to. He feels like he's committed a sin.

"This is fucking crazy." He hears Billy get up, gruff but still quiet. A hand grabs his shoulder, pulls him up. "Come on, we're going to the bathroom."

His heart pounds just at the thought. Ever since they got stuck here, he's avoided looking at the mirrors in the bathroom. Still, Billy's grip is too tight for him to pull away.

They wait until they're all in the bathroom, door closed, before Billy turns on the light. It's for the kids' benefit, trying not to wake them, and even though he's wary of Billy he trusts and respects him because he really does care for Max, really does try to keep them safe, in his own way. He hadn't been here as long as them- he and Max appeared here only a day or so before they met them. Strangely enough, if Steve remembers correctly, El was the one who told them to take the road that led to finding the two. He can't help but wonder if it was a coincidence, after she randomly found the rest of them at Steve's house.

The bathroom is a decent size, with a full shower and sink and a mirror that takes up the entire wall. Steve blinks at the sharp light, eyes adjusting quickly. His gaze avoids the mirror.

A hand grabs his. He can tell it's Jonathan, from just the feeling of it. He's memorized the strangest things about all of them, it isn't surprising that he can tell who's holding his hand just by the feeling of it. When it's the easiest way to show comfort, it just makes sense. The only one he wouldn't recognize immediately is Billy, and yet he still would because he would know that it couldn't be anyone else.

"It's okay." Jonathan says, and they can tell he's scared. It makes him embarrassed. "They're just a reflection, they can't touch us."

Steve's not too sure about that. He's pretty sure that's what El is worried about.

(Is she breaking mirrors for herself, or him?)

Still, he has a responsibility. He can't hide this any longer, and he can't be scared. He doesn't need the others to treat him like a kid, he needs to be useful. Helpful.

He raises his head slowly, eyes locked straight ahead until he meets his gaze in the mirror.

Suddenly, he can't look away.

"What do you see?" Billy asks, because it's obvious he sees something, something they don't. "What is it?"

Steve's lost his voice. He's squeezing Jonathan's hand hard, too hard. He's not sure he's even breathing.

"The light is dull." He can't say it. He can't say it. "It's dark, darker than here. There's black stuff, vines, covering the walls."

He can't say it.

Billy narrows his eyes. "Is that it?" He asks, and Steve wants to cry. A sob gets stuck in his throat. "That doesn't sound like it's it, Harrington."

"Steve." Nancy grabs his other hand, eyes wide in concern. "Are you okay?"

He can't say it. Why can't he say it?

"No." He blurts out, and his eyes finally leave his own reflection, going up and up and to the right, landing on something the others can't see and staying there. 

Nancy is the one who notices. Her eyes track his in the mirror, landing on the same spot. It's behind them, behind the glass door of the shower. She sees his posture, the tension and horror lining his frame, and when she speaks next it's a tense whisper. "What do you see?"

Come on, just say it.

This must be the feeling of a horror so strong that you lose your voice. He feels so small.

Jonathan makes a sound of pain, fingers flexing in his vice grip. Moments later he squeezes back just as hard, eyes widening. His voice is even quieter than Nancy's. "Is it the monster?"

No one speaks. He's no longer the only tense one.

"We should leave." Is what he says, unable to stop staring. "Can we leave?"

Nancy nods her head, Jonathan's the one to start pulling him away and Billy's the one who pushes everyone out, turning off the light. Steve can't see it for a second in the dark, but his eyes adjust before he leaves and the outline appears before he looks away.

It isn't until Billy closes the door behind them that Steve feels like he can breathe again. 

"What the fuck was that Harrington?" Billy hisses out the moment he relaxes, grabbing his collar and pulling him back towards the table. He's shoved into a chair, something Steve does distantly acknowledge as Billy helping him given how unsteady he was. That moment ends, though, when Billy glares at him. "What the fuck did you see?"

Steve swallows thickly. When he opens his mouth, though, he can speak. "A monster." He whispers, and Billy's anger drains from his face. "There was a monster, right behind us. Right behind us."

He curls up into a ball in his chair and tries not to cry.

"I can teach you!"

Nancy rolls her eyes from her spot, hidden in the shade near a tree. "You can't teach her when you don't even know."

Mike pouts, ears red. El just smiles at him. "I know how to swim!"

"No you don't." Lucas laughs at him, clapping his shoulder. "You hate swimming."

Mike's whole face goes red, and Dustin joins in the laughter. Steve feels bad for him.

"You know what, I'm a pretty good swimmer, I can teach you a thing or two." Steve gives him an out, and Mike looks at him with stars in his eyes. 

Billy snorts, crossing his arms. "I'll keep watch and make sure Steve doesn't let you drown."

Billy had mentioned something about enjoying the water before. Steve gives him a short grin.

Mike cheers, grabbing El's healthy hand (the other's wound had closed over, but was still injured) and running towards the nearby pool that had started this entire conversation.

It's not hard to find swimsuits for all of them. The pool has a side store with all they could need, and they all get changed for a day at the poolside. 

It goes… better than expected.

The older kids and El are wary of getting close to the water. Steve has a hard time looking towards the pool, regrets his decision to teach them to swim, scared of seeing a reflection in the water.

Then Dustin cannonballs in, rippling the water and shattering the reflection, and suddenly all Steve could see was the blue of the water and the white tiles at the bottom.

He relaxes, and the others relax with him.

All in all, he enjoyed it. Mike was worse than Steve expected, and El was much better than expected. She said she had never been in the water before, but she was almost a natural with it. Steve had to spend more time watching Mike than he did El. Billy was too busy with the other kids, because Jonathan could not swim to save his life, so it was just Steve watching these two.

Still, they had fun, El had fun, and it was one of the first times Steve's seen her so carefree.

He relaxes in the water, keeps his eyes on them while he does so. The urge to go under and just stay for a while is strong. Steve used to do it a lot as a child, staring at the world underwater until his lungs urged him back up. He doesn't of course, has kids to watch over, but the desire is almost overwhelming.

It's a hot day outside, which is the reason swimming came up in the first place. They sun dry and change back into their regular clothes right before the sun sets, and Steve, forgetting his fears, looks back at the pool one more time.

He can see a reflection on the pool, the degree he's looking making it hard to really perceive. There's no color, looking at the water, or maybe there is color but it's just dulled. Whatever it is Steve can still see the reflected cloudy sky, contrasting with the clear day.

Surprisingly, though, that's all he sees. It's all he sees. There's nothing else there.

He's pulled away. They head to a hotel to sleep. Jonathan promised Will that they'd go to the arcade tomorrow. The kids are cheering.

Steve squeezes his eyes shut and hopes that he is insane, and that everything he sees is just make believe.

He dreams that night, of bloody skies and red lightning. Someone screams, he thinks it's El, and black vines crawl up his legs, circle around his neck and stab into his eyes. 

He wakes up with a gasp, sees Dustin's worried face in front of him, and screams.

The world is dark, the overhead light flickering dully. Little particles of something rest in the air, dreary red light painting it a grayish red. The room is covered in those vines again, pulsating in a way they weren't before.

That's not what scares him.

There's a demon at the foot of the bed, a monstrous amalgamation of creatures he's never seen before, didn't know until now. The thing is still, has no face or eyes, but Steve can tell where it's looking. What it's facing.

Steve scrambles back, away from Dustin. His back hits the wall and his hands clench the bed sheets. They're all looking at him, scared and confused and worried, and they can't see it, he realizes. They can't see the monster. They can't see the creature staring at El.

El pays it no mind, doesn't give it even a tiny bit of her attention. It's almost like she can't see it either, but no, that's not possible, Steve knows she can she has to be able to-

"Steve!" And yet El passes it, doesn't seem to see. She crawls up on the bed, passing Dustin until they're face to face. Steve's lightheaded, all of a sudden, and he realizes that he's hyperventilating. "Steve, me! Look at me!"

He can't. He can't look away.

The older kids catch on, what happened before coming to mind. They look towards where he is, obviously seeing nothing but wary nonetheless. Nancy grabs Mike, pulls him away from his gaze. The monster pays them no mind, even though Mike was standing next to it.

"You have to." El grabs his head, forces it to face her. His eyes flicker back and forth, from it to her. "You are okay. Promise."

It meant nothing.

But then El closed her eyes, resting her forehead against his. Around him, the world seemed to flicker. The red light flashed in and out of reality, the vines fading away and the particles disappearing. Slowly, surely, the world went back into place.

Steve takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes harshly before opening them again. The monster is still fading, though everything else is gone. It had turned its head as El had moved, still staring at her. He felt something cold brush against his spine.

"Don't look." El whispered, eyes still closed, and Steve realized it then. It wasn't that she couldn't see it, she was ignoring it. "Don't."

He looked away, down at his hands. A flicker of movement caught his eyes, though, and he couldn't stop himself from looking back up.

The monster had moved its head again. It had no eyes, there was no way to tell, but Steve knew, instinctively knew, that it was looking at him.

Then it flickered out of existence, and the world settled back into place.

The room was quiet, save for his ragged breathing. El slowly opened her eyes, leaned back and caught his. When he found her gaze, he saw vines and particles reflected in her eyes.

It took him a moment to come back into himself. The other kids were terrified, eyes wide and concerned. He's never had an episode like that, never done anything to make them think he would. They're scared and confused, but what was he supposed to say? What was he supposed to tell them? He's terrified, but they're children. They are nine years old, how do you tell a child still scared about monsters under their beds that the monster is real?

"Sorry." He croaked out, rubbing his eyes. El sat back, expression passive, waiting. Waiting to see what he does next. "Had a bad nightmare- wasn't fully done when I woke up."

A half lie. The older kids all stared at him, shocked. The younger kids looked just as concerned as before, but at least now that panic wouldn't stay. Wouldn't keep them up at night.

Max sits down next to him. "My friend told me about demons that appear right after you wake up." She says solemnly, pats his hand. "She said they're scary, but they can't get you."

Jonathan perks up at that. "It's called a sleep paralysis demon." He says, a bit too eager. "I read about them. It happens right after you wake up cause the dream part of your brain is still dreaming, so you accidentally see your dream in real life!"

El glances over him once more, studying him silently, before shifting backwards and away. "I am good with nightmares." She finally says, expression blank. "I help."

Dustin takes her place almost immediately, settling on top of Steve like a hug was all he needed. Lucas and Will join in a few seconds later, the added weight and heat a familiar anchor that he didn't know he needed. Behind them, Billy and Nancy exchange looks, and Jonathan's eyes flicker from Will to El. El, who is looking at the space the monster occupied minutes before. Her nostrils flare, anger passing briefly across her face. Her fists clenched, her knuckles white.

And Steve feels another gaze on him, one foreign yet familiar. It stays on him, even after they all go to sleep.

Chapter Text

For the first time since this all started, they got separate rooms.

This was normal in the beginning, but changed very quickly. They went from seperate rooms to the same room in different areas to piling on top of each other, worried that somehow they'll wake up and one of them won't be there anymore. They did it mostly for the kids, none of them blamed the nine year olds for wanting someone around, especially in such a strange situation. Whenever one of them got mad and tried to sleep somewhere else, they always came back within the hour, stone faced or with tears in their eyes. Scared over a sound their own minds made up.

This time, it was different.

They pack up and leave the hotel easily, in a new packed RV with an instruction manual that will hopefully teach them how gas stations work. The younger kids hadn't forgotten about last night, but they had put it behind them for the most part. Steve pretends not to notice when Lucas and Dustin grab one of his hands each, holding him in between them as they walk. The older kids are solemn, quiet, and Steve has a feeling they talked about something after he fell back asleep.

They drive for maybe a quarter of the day, reaching an urban neighborhood and parking outside of the biggest house there. Luckily for them, the table was set, with five plates half full of food and multiple bowls and plates in the middle with different servings of food.

They eat, settled around the living area and dining room. When the sun falls the kids are sprawled out on the large couch and futons, big enough for all of them and then some. Steve's just finished grabbing some blankets when he hears Dustin's noise of disapproval. "What?"

"We'll be just upstairs." Jonathan soothes as Steve comes into view, dropping the blankets on top of Mike.

"Steve!" Dustin protests, like he knows what's going on. "Tell them not to!"

"Not to what?" He glances at the others, confused. The kids are upset with something. "What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Billy crosses his arms. "This house has like, seven bedrooms though. If you guys wanna set up down here then do it, just don't bother us."

Max snaps back at him, something Steve doesn't have time to interpret. It's odd, because while they can all do fine on their own, none of them have a problem with sleeping close by. In fact, he has a feeling they all prefer it. He knows they would prefer it, after what happened last night, and when he first saw the monster.

If they wanted separate rooms now, something was wrong.

It was the look in Nancy's eyes, though, that settled it. A look of trust, that made Steve say. "I mean, it's just up a few stairs. Let's try it, and if it really bothers you I'll come back downstairs and sleep here."

There was a bit of lower lip wobbling, but the kids eventually agreed, but only if they would wait until after they all fell asleep. The others agreed enthusiastically to that, and Steve couldn't help his suspicion.

It didn't take long for them to all doze off. Nancy walks quietly around them all, checking each one. The moment she's sure they're all asleep she nods, and a hand grabs Steve's bicep and yanks him up again. Steve barely questions it, expecting something like this to happen. He's surprised when El sits up, eyes catching theirs like she was waiting for it. Nancy helps her extract herself from the others as Billy practically pulls Steve up the stairs.

They go to the room furthest from the stairs, a decent room with a single window and (thankfully) no attached bathroom. Billy pushes him towards the bed as he lets go of him, his silent version of sit your ass down. Jonathan slips into the room behind them, followed by El and Nancy.

"Alright." Billy starts once the door is closed. "Okay. What, the hell, was that?"

Steve's had a whole day to figure it out himself and yet he still doesn't know. He opens his mouth to say so, but something else comes out, directed at somebody else. "It looked at me." He says, eyes flickering towards El. "Right at the end. It was staring at you, like you were the only one it could see, but then it looked at me."

El's nostrils flare again, but Steve doesn't know who her anger is directed at. "It saw you." She says. "It's not supposed to."

"Stop." Billy holds up a hand, obviously frustrated. "El, I am trying to keep my cool here, cause I know you're still learning how to talk-" and because she's nine, and because the other three in the room would beat him black and blue if he tried laying a hand on her during his rage- "-so I want you to take a moment and think very clearly about what you've been hiding, and don't leave anything out. In the meantime, Steve-"

"I know." Steve sighed, ran a hand through his hair. "I don't know what happened, really. I had a dream, I think. Something happened in the dream, and when I woke up the world was…"

"You saw the monster." Nancy guessed, moreso confirming her suspicions. Steve nodded. "You saw it without a mirror."

"Not just it." Steve continues. "Everything. It was like the entire world was different. Like I had just stepped into a different dimension. Then El did something and…"

His fingers dig into his pants, mind flashing through images of what he had seen. El is pulling on her hair, rubbing at a bandaid on her wrist. She always has a bandaid on her wrist, Steve realizes. Whenever she's in short sleeves she has on a bandaid. Steve wonders if she has a scar there, one she doesn't want to see.

"So it's not a mirror world." Jonathan surmises, hand under chin. "If you don't need a reflection to see it- it's almost like your nightmare peeled back the layer that is this world and let you see the layer underneath."

No matter how terrifying that sounds, Steve is happy that Jonathan is so into fantasy and sci-fi books, even if the implications are terrible.

"What if it's not even that?" Nancy says after a moment, staring at El. "If El can see that world, and can make Steve not see it… what if these two layers aren't layers at all? What if what we're seeing isn't real?"

El visibly flinches, and Steve realizes that Nancy was right.

This place isn't real.

El takes a deep breath, fingers curling into one another anxiously. "This place is a dimension." She confirms slowly, softly. "There are no people. No animals. No plants. Only monsters and danger. My papa found this place, using me."

She clenches her hands, before removing the bandaid from her wrist. There, in inky black letters, is a small tattoo. 011.

Someone sucked in a breath, because it felt almost dystopian to see that. Nancy stared at it for a few seconds, before her eyes widened and she audibly gasped. "Your name isn't Ellen." She said, "It's Eleven."

El nods, still not meeting their eyes. Billy's voice was angry when he spoke. "Your dad found a dimension with monsters in it and decided to use you to reach it?!"

Steve understood at that moment that if Billy ever met El's dad he would kill him. And from the looks on the other's faces they might join him. So would Steve.

Another nod. "Something went wrong." She says, "You came in too. It's too dangerous. If the monsters see you, they'll hurt you. I made it so they can't. Can't see you."

Steve doesn't want to understand, but he can. It's just… the entire idea of it…

"So you're the reason why everything looks normal?" Nancy asks, voice wavering. "How?"

El shrugs. "If they saw you, they would hurt you." Is her answer. "So I put you somewhere they could not see. As long as you are close, you are safe."

Billy frowns. "What about me and Max then? We never saw whatever you're talking about."

El looks up at him, catches Billy's eyes. "I felt you." She murmurs. "Felt you come in. You were too far, but only for a little bit. I… I made a risk. It worked. They didn't see you."

"But they can see you, El." Steve cuts in, because that was a problem. "That monster wouldn't stop looking at you."

"It can't hurt me." She promises. "I would hurt it. And it needs me. The monster at home needs me."

A chill goes down his spine. She made them leave as soon as possible. "Why does it need you?"

El bites her lip. "I can get us home, if we go there." For a second, she looks scared. "But the monster wants to go there too. If we go, the monster might come with us. If we… if we go back there, the monster might be able to see you."

Vines digging into his eyes.

Nancy shudders, wrapping her arms around herself. Steve digs his fingers into his hair. Jonathan frowns. "What happened with Steve, then? Why can he see things in reflections? How'd he see the real world last night?"

El cups her elbows, lips down turned and eyes wilted. "I don't know." She admits, tone full of sorrow. "I tried to help. Broke mirrors, hid reflections. The more he saw it, the harder it would be to hide him. Last night… I don't know what happened. He was still hidden, I was still hiding him, but he was aware."

Steve raises his eyebrows. "Aware?"

El nods. "You were aware. You knew this place wasn't real. You weren't hidden anymore. The monster saw you."

Steve flinches as the others freeze, surprise taking over their features.

"The monster saw you and you didn't tell us?" Billy looks like he might kill Steve himself. "Damnit, Harrington-"

"What does that mean?" Nancy asks, eyes wide. "Can it still see him?"

El shook her head. "He is hidden." She assured. "But… I think… I think the monster is doing something. Stopping me. Making him unhidden."

Vines digging into his eyes. El screams.

"My dream." Steve says suddenly. "I remember it, at least a little bit. It was this dimension, whatever it actually is, red sky and everything. I couldn't move, but I thought I heard you, El. Then vines, like, stabbed me. In both my eyes."

Jonathan winces sympathetically, and Nancy's hand brushes over her own face. El considers something.

"Why does it even know about Steve in the first place?" Billy brings up. "I mean, if El hid all of us, and the rest of us can't see anything in the mirrors, what makes Steve different?"

"I don't know." El says again. "But I think, if the monster can make Steve see, he can make everyone see. I might not be able to hide you, anymore."

Steve almost forgets how to breathe, then. El picks at the bottom of her shirt. The blocky tattoo is stark against her skin.

"There's a lot of questions here." Nancy says after a moment. "Why is Steve different? Why were we the ones taken here? How is any of this possible, and how in the world does El have any control over it? We…" she takes a second, sucks in a deep breath. "I really miss my mom."

It takes a lot of willpower from all of them to not break down at that exact moment.

"I am scared." El says in the silence. "Papa said that if the door is closed, anything over here cannot make it over there, in our home. Papa said that the monsters know that."

"You mean if something from this dimension got stuck in our dimension without a way back, it would die?" Nancy asks, humming when El nods. "Is that why your Papa felt safe with connecting them?"

El frowned. "He only wanted me to go in." She replies. "Papa said I could not… host it, because I was me. He said if others came in, they could, and then the monster could come over. If the monster knew, it would hurt you."

Jonathan blinks. "You mean it's like a parasite?"

"Oh." Billy catches on. "So the monster can't survive in our place by its own, but if it leaves in a host then it can."

Steve gawks at that. "Would I be the host?!"

El looks at the ground, somber. "It would hurt you." She confirms, and Steve feels nauseous. "That's why I hide you. We can not go back. It will sense you."

So many things are swirling around in his head. Steve feels a headache coming on. "This is crazy… why can I see it, but no one else?"

No one had an answer for him.

They stay in Florida for well over a month, enjoying themselves and forgetting about their looming problems. They explore Disney and several other places, eating food frozen in time and conveniently forget to tell the kids that they're all in danger. Steve goes back to avoiding mirrors and water, can almost forget his trouble if he does so.

He still feels eyes lingering on him. He hasn't looked in a mirror since that night. Doesn't want to see the monster staring back.

They've been staying in different rooms at the same resort for a week now, switching rooms whenever the last one gets too messy. They're all out at the pool deck, incredibly lazy. Steve's head is on Jonathan's thigh while Nancy's head is on Steve's stomach. Billy is sprawled nearby, close enough to touch but far enough that he won't kick them in his sleep. The kids are crowded under an umbrella playing some type of game.

It's not really super comfortable, laying on the concrete with only a few towels underneath them, but they don't care enough to move. Steve's head is turned towards the kids, sunglasses protecting his eyes from the hot day. They're all okay, half of them have sunburn, but okay besides that. Steve wished one of them thought about sunscreen, but they're from Indiana and their parents are usually in charge of that, not them. It's too late, anyway.

His eyes close, his mind dozing off to the soft sound of laughter and bickering. Someone grabs his hand, squeezes it. A weight slowly settles over his body, Nancy trying to get more comfortable. Steve pays it no mind, drifting farther into sleep.

His eyes snap open, minutes or hours later. The sky flickers red for a brief moment, and Steve takes a deep breath, tries to not freak out.

Then he realizes that while he still feels the weight of Nancy on him, Nancy isn't actually on him.

He frowns, goes to move, when a voice stops him. "Don't move."

Steve pauses, looks up at El, who's standing over him. Her eyes are wide, frightened, and Steve wonders what she's seeing right now. "What's wrong?"

He doesn't know what woke him up, but Jonathan and Nancy stand a few feet away now, as does Billy. The kids are with them, confused and curious and a little scared. El bites her lip, frustrated. 

"I have too… I have too…" she looks over at the others, gestures them closer. "I have to stop hiding. All of it."

His body freezes at that, fear encompassing him. "What?"

"You don't see." El asserts, even as the kids ask questions and his friends look horrified. "I have to. You aren't completely hidden. I have to, to, redo it."

Steve wants to get up and tell her no, but he can't move. Something is on him, something he can't see. "Why can't I move, El?"

El looks both determined and scared. "You will see." Her promise is dark. She turns to the others. "Please, listen to me. To help him, you will only be half hidden. You will see. Please, you must stay quiet. Do not make any noise. Do not look at it."

There were questions. Of course there were. They were scared, of course they were. El did not pay them any attention. She turned back to him.

Closed her eyes.

The world flickered around them.

And, for the first time, the others saw it too.

It's different, being outside when it happens. The ground underneath him changes, and suddenly the smooth concrete is rocky and grainy, hurting his back as he settles on gray earth. The sky up above is dark, covering the sky in almost black clouds. Red lightning slashes across the sky periodically, and the trees Steve saw in the distance were nothing more than petrified trunks.

Someone does a half scream, cut off quickly. Steve sees Will, eyes wide and fearful. Jonathan's hand is covering his mouth, as tense and terrified as he is.

Then Steve looks down and sees.

His body is covered in black vines, wrapping around him like the arms of a creature he can't fully fathom. They inch forward, creeping closer and closer to his head. They seem to thrum and pulse to the beat of his heart.

El steps forward, eyes blazing. The vines seem to hiss at her. In the far, far, far distance, so far that Steve's not sure he even truly heard it, something roars.

Flying monsters careen towards them, some mix of a bat and something else. They swerve up before hitting anyone, and the rest of his group flinches, the kids huddling up together. El's head snaps back to them, posture one hard line, and the kids freeze. Don't move.

There's a crunching of rocks, a few feet away. A short, cut off scream. Steve's eyes flicker over. He sees the monster again.

It looks at El. It looks at him.

"No." El whispers, voice strained, and with a pained grunt the vines are ripped away by an invisible force. The monster wails, mouth opening like a blooming flower. It ambles forward, before breaking out into a run towards them.

Not towards them, towards him.

But then El screams, fully screams, and the old world slams back down like curtains closing. Steve feels something close to warm breath on his arms, even as he scrambles away, now free. He backs up a few more feet, even though he can't see the monster that was right there anymore, and a hand grabs him right before he stumbles into the pool.

It's Billy who pulls him away, eyes wide in awful fear. For a second he seems to be at a loss for words. "Jesus Christ, Steve."

Steve takes in a few breaths, trying to settle himself. Moments later a body comes flying at him, and he can barely comprehend Dustin colliding with him. The boy is shaking madly, and Steve can already feel a wetness in his shirt. The other kids aren't much better.

Steve can't do much more besides hold Dustin and pray to a higher power he no longer believes in.

Tommy barely manages to copy his half finished homework before class starts, and in the few minutes they have of the teacher getting ready Steve scribbles down some answers he's sure are semi correct. While he doesn't show it, Steve can be good at academics if he tries. Whenever something holds his attention he can actually be very good at it, and luckily this day's homework was one of those subjects. That meant that when the teacher collected the homework, most of his answers were actually correct.

Sadly, today's lesson wasn't about evolution (they were talking about the mitochondria, urgh) so he lost interest pretty quickly. Resting his chin on his propped up hand, his eyes fluttered to the window. He made a game of counting the amount of birds he saw on the nearby tree and categorizing them by color. So far, it was actually yellow birds winning, with gray birds not far behind. Steve blinks, waits for the next bird to come to add to the mental list.

When no birds come he frowns. That's when he realized that he wasn't just zoning out the teacher talking, but that the teacher wasn't talking. Surprised, he looks around to see that the room is empty.

"What the-" he stands up, looks around again because had he zoned out for that long? No way the teacher would just let that happen, right? He didn't even hear the bell.

But the clock on the wall… it's still class time. Where'd everyone go?

Cautiously, he leaves the classroom. The halls are empty, like it was the weekend and Steve somehow just imagined the whole day. Yet, there was still stuff laying around. Open lockers and discarded bookbags. The desks in each classroom had paper and pencils and calculators, all the people were just gone.

"Hello?" He calls out, right before remembering that horror movies teach you not to do that. He curses quietly, but then smirks when a voice replies back.

"Is someone there?" The voice is feminine, not too far, and it's coming from the seventh grade hall, which is just around the corner. Before he can start down that way someone comes around the corner. Steve recognizes her just because it's Nancy Wheeler, Hawkins' genius. They catch eyes, the only two around in an empty school, and panic.

"We're being c-chased." Max, for the first time since they've all been together, is seeking Billy's comfort. She's completely leaned against him, holding herself and very obviously scared. Billy has an arm around her, almost awkward in his comfort. "by a m-monster?"

"Not you." El tries to assure. None of them wanted to, but they told the kids everything because they couldn't not after what they had seen. "It didn't see you. Only me. And Steve."

Dustin and Lucas, much like Max, were clutching onto either side of Steve. Will and Mike were holding each other, and Nancy and Jonathan were on either side of them. Steve just tried to keep his heart from running.

"This entire time…" Dustin had calmed down considerably, and while he was still obviously horrified he seemed to be partially intrigued as well. "Your Papa caused this, El?"

El ducks her head in shame and nods. "Yes."

"But you don't know why we're here?" Lucas asks, hands shaking. "Why Billy and Max? Why Steve?"

Steve recognizes that the other kids are connected in some way, besides the three of them. Lucas, Will, Mike, and Dustin are all best friends, and then Nancy and Jonathan are related to Mike and Will. Steve, on the other hand, barely knew Nancy and Jonathan in passing. Billy and Max were completely removed from it.

"I'm sorry." El answers, because she doesn't know. "I'm sorry."

"B-but…" Will speaks up for the first time since this all happened. "If we get b-back to Hawkins, we can go h-home?"

"But the monster…" Mike's voice is quiet. "Can we sneak past it?"

El tilts her head, thinking. "I don't know." She finally says. "It would be… hard."

"El." Dustin cuts in again, staring at nothing with a concentrated frown. "What did your Papa want from this place?"

El frowns. "He wanted to know what was here." She says slowly, thinking. "I can see different places without being there. I saw this place before, and I told him. Papa thought that if I came here and tried to leave somewhere else, I would show up there."

"Like teleporting?" Dustin asks, before reiterating. "You'd go from one place to another without walking there. Everyone would think you're teleporting, but you're actually dimension hopping."

El takes a second to consider before nodding. "Papa wanted me to spy on people." She explained. "When I saw this place, he wanted to know more. He asked me to open a door."

"And somehow, this happened instead." Jonathan mumbles, downtrodden. "We all get stuck here, and El has to use her powers to hide us from man eating monsters."

El frowns. "The monster pulled me in." She hypothesizes. "Pulled us in. I'm sorry."

"One second." Dustin's gone from scared to skeptical. "Where exactly does your Papa work?"

El blinks at him, not comprehending, and something wiggles its way into Steve's brain, a thought he's been having finally taking root and he can't ignore it any longer.

"El, before all this happened…" he struggles to find the words. "Where you lived… did you ever leave it?"

El blinks again. "No." Tilts her head. "Papa said I couldn't."

Billy scowls. Jonathan's eyebrows raise. "Who else was with you, El?"

El considers. "There were orderlies." She starts out. "Papa and his friends. Other kids like me."

Nancy purses her lips, catching on. "Did they also have tattoos like you?"

El nods easily, and Steve feels something get stuck in his throat. "What's your actual name, El?"

El just blinks again. "Papa named me Eleven." She says simply, like that's normal, and fuck why hadn't they noticed that before?

The kids find it strange, all looking at her funny, but he gets it, the others do too if he goes by their horrified expressions. El has strange superpowers. El never left her home. El didn't know anyone besides her Papa and his 'friends'. El showed up with a shaved head. El doesn't have a name besides a number.

In any other situation Steve would laugh and say they have their heads stuck in the clouds. This is not any other situation.

El is a science experiment. El is a science experiment.

This Papa was probably the US fucking government and the people she was spying on were probably fucking Russians.

Steve never really believed in the paranoia brought in by the news media. Apparently he should've believed.

"It's probably Hawkins Lab then." Dustin says, and Steve comes back into the conversation. The kid glued to his side looks proud for figuring it out. "They're studying your powers there, and that's where the door is."

Probably.

Wait.

"Hawkins Lab?" Steve pipes up. "I've been there before."

Chapter Text

Steve's family is inarguably the richest family in Hawkins, and it intends to keep that wealth and grow it. To do so, it invests both locally and nationally in things the Harringtons expect to thrive. 

One of those things just happen to be Hawkins Lab, something that already got government funding and thus was more likely to do well.

His parents were pretty progressive when it came to letting his mother have a large say in what goes on financially, partially because she was clever in aspects he wasn't and partially because they loved each other too much to not do everything together. That meant that when it was time to have a meeting with the head honchos at Hawkins Lab, they both went together.

Steve, at the time, was seven years old.

His nanny, at the time, was sick.

So Steve got to go with them, as long as he was quiet and didn't touch anything, which he did pretty well. He didn't really know what was going on at the time, but after going to a few of these things once he was older he started to understand what he was doing at the lab when he was younger.

It was pretty boring, if he really thinks about it. Everything he saw was pretty above board, and the white stagnant walls left him dull and bored. He remembers wanting to see the rest of the compound, but no one letting him, because it was apparently classified.

At one point he had to go to the bathroom, so one of the workers there had two people in white clothing take him to the nearest bathroom. They passed by the door leading to the rest of the compound on the way back, and Steve stopped to stare at it. "Just a little peek?"

"No." One of them snapped while the other looked at him curiously.

"You really want to see, huh?" The other asks, smiling kindly. Steve nods.

"I wanna know!" He tries to explain, does puppy dog eyes for a moment and wobbles his bottom lip. "It's calling me!"

They both pause at that, and the stern one frowns while the kind one smiles bigger.

The stern one is gruff. "What's calling to you?"

"Adventure." Steve says seriously, solemnly, because something in his head is telling him to say that. "It's a mister-y!"

The stern one rolls his eyes and tells them to wait, suddenly needing to use the bathroom as well. The kind one watches him go, large smile still set on his face. It's a bit more curved then it was before.

The moment he's out of sight the kind one drops into a crouch in front of Steve. "Wanna know a secret?"

Steve's eyes widened. "Yeah!"

"It was me." He whispered, almost conspiratorially. "I was the one calling to you. I didn't think you'd hear, but you did."

Steve's eyes widen even more, mouth dropping open dramatically. "No way! How?"

"Magic." The man wiggles his fingers, grinning. "I call out to everyone, to see if they can hear. The adults never can, they don't have magic."

Steve was amazed. "Can you do more magic?!"

The man sighs. "Sadly not, I'm a bit restricted at the moment." He shoots him a lopsided grin. "But maybe I will the next time we meet, yeah?"

Steve nods enthusiastically. The stern man comes back even more stern than before, glaring at the kind one like he did something wrong. They escort Steve back to his parents, and Steve says nothing, because it was a secret and adults don't believe in magic anyway.

When he thinks back on it, he realizes that the entire thing was just another adult helping a kid have some fun during a boring meeting. There was no magic, Steve probably just made up the feeling of being called to. Nothing more, nothing less.

Apparently not.

"He was probably the youngest one there." Steve recalls. "Blonde hair, brown eyes I think. Was he a number, El?"

El frowns, looking troubled. "Maybe it was One?" She guesses, but doesn't sound sure. "It could be."

Dustin considers it. "Can One do mind magic?" 

El nods. "One went away a while ago." She says, looking at her hands. "Papa said he was dangerous. He had a thing, it made his powers weak. We thought it was mean, because it hurt him. Two took it away, and One started hurting the orderlies. I got scared, and then One disappeared."

Ah, great, fantastic, very good help from a child who barely knows how to speak. Shit. Their luck is trash.

"Do you think you got scared and opened a door back then?" Nancy says softly, calmly, almost coxing the answer out. "And that's why he disappeared?"

El seems to struggle with her own thoughts for a moment. Then she nods. "I think so."

"So what you're saying is…" Billy tightens his arm around Max. "There's a guy in here, right now, with superpowers. One that's violent and also would hate you because you accidentally trapped him in here."

El ducks her head. "I'm sorry."

Billy mutters out something like, "Shit."

Shit indeed.

"That might explain why El has trouble hiding Steve though." Jonathan suggests. "Maybe One is messing with it? It's harder to hide someone he's even somewhat familiar with?"

El glared at the ground. "I must keep Steve hidden." She declares, determined in a way Steve's never seen before. "They cannot see him." She insists. "They are already aware. They want him."

Oh well great.

Two pairs of arms tighten around him. Steve takes in a shaky breath, releases it smoothly. "How'd the vines even get me in the first place?"

"I don't know." El admits. "You had no dream?"

"I was barely asleep, and it started before I even fell asleep." Steve stares out the window. They're still at the resort, just now in a new room. For a second the window casts a red reflection and Steve looks away quickly.

"I have not seen One at all." El assures after a moment. "If he is here, he is not following us. The monster that chases us is a watcher. I've… I've never seen him run before."

But of course, it ran after Steve. The moment it could see him it ran at him.

"It really wants a host then." Jonathan guesses. "If El can't be one, and I'm guessing One can't be one either, then Steve is the only option it knows about."

El nods. "It would take you to the big monster." She adds. "You would be a host."

The only reason he isn't freaking out is because he doesn't feel something watching him anymore. He'd have fallen apart by now if he could.

"But it can't see him now, right?" Mike asks. "Cause you reset whatever you did. He's completely hidden?"

El nods. "I don't know how long." She concedes. "But he is. If it is true, and One is the one unhiding him…"

It won't last, and probably won't last long either. Steve shudders just imagining that thing running at him again.

"We have'ta get out of here." Max murmurs, face solemn. "We can't run, can we?"

El shakes her head, and the kids all wilt. Steve's head is swirling, the idea of everything almost too much to handle. A single conversation with a guy he can barely remember really fucked him up this badly, years later? How…

Wait. "That might explain why I can see what El sees, and why I'm in this place to begin with, but now I'm even more confused." Steve glances at the older kids, gaze hard. "If One is the reason I'm here, then is he the reason you guys are here too? If so, how the hell did he ever meet Billy and Max?"

All questions they may never get answers too. Besides, just because One may have brought Steve here, doesn't mean he's also the cause for the others coming here either. None of this makes any sense.

Sleep doesn't come easy for any of them, but Steve finally gets to sleep after El crawls her way over and curls up next to him, back against Dustin. His sleep is dreamless and he wakes up drowsy and tired.

Breakfast is quiet. They finally start driving out of Florida, planning to finally get closer to Hawkins. Nancy thought it might be smart to head into Virginia and see if they could possibly find anything in the Pentagon, or the CIA or FBI's headquarters. Billy then said they should just head for Area 51, because the alien warehouse might possibly know what's going on with this alternate dimension.

The latter plan is rejected, but they do plan to at least try and see if they can find anything. If they can even get in. He doubts there will be maps to help them once they're inside, and he definitely doubts it'll be easy finding keys.

And yet El seems to think she can handle it so at least-

They drive all day, stopping twice for food and five times for bathroom breaks. Steve, entirely done with all of that, walks into the woods to relieve himself. He's not dealing with mirrors anymore.

All proceeding discussion of it goes nowhere. They talk themselves in circles trying to figure out the whys and hows of everything. It isn't until they stop at a roadside motel for the night that they actually have another meaningful conversation. One Steve only heard half of.

He's woken up maybe an hour after falling asleep by his friends, all of which had stayed up. "Wha-?"

"Wake up, Harrington." Billy whispers. "After we get out of this hell hole, how likely do you think it is that your parents would be up for adopting another kid?"

Steve's eyes blow wide open. "What-!"

Billy slaps his mouth shut with his hand, and Steve hears Jonathan and Nancy harshly shush him. Billy rolls his eyes. "It's for El, dumbass."

Steve blinks, understands. Billy removes his hand. "I could probably convince them, but I'd have to tell them a lot. They probably wouldn't believe it."

"We should make up a story anyway." Nancy recommends. "Or else they'll think we're crazy."

Jonathan hums his agreement. "It'll be hard, since we probably disappeared straight from school, but we could say we were kidnapped."

Nancy grins then, something very evil. "Actually, we could say we were kidnapped by El's father."

They all stare at her. Then, Billy joins in with his own grin. "Officer please!" He says, voice mocking. "That man kidnapped us! He was experimenting on us like he did those other kids!"

Jonathan hums again. "That might actually work."

"We'll show up in Hawkins Lab too, right?" Steve asks. "Cause that's where the door is? Or will we show up where we left from?"

They collectively shrug. Nancy sighs. "No matter what, though, El is not going back to that man." She sounds very set on that. "He's probably not even her actual father. She probably is actually kidnapped."

They're all in agreement there.

He dreams that night of cracked earth and a giant being towering above him. The spider like creature bellows, and in front of him El screams, vines holding her hands in place as creatures devour her head.

They find nothing in Virginia. Well, besides history lessons and an impromptu trip up Appalachian drive. Will is the one who wants to see both Monticello and Mount Vernon, and they all realize that they might actually die in the next few days so why not enjoy themselves before so. That meant going to all the museums in DC and sprawling across the desk in the Oval Office. They debate checking out New York City but decide against it.

They're somewhere in Pennsylvania at some random truck stop when El coughs up blood and Mike screams.

They try to help El first, since Mike is in the bathroom and thus out of vision. She seems fine, more surprised than injured in any way. Mike comes stumbling out of the bathroom, eyes wide and horrified.

"I s-saw it!" He stutters, pointing towards the bathroom. "The m-mirror!"

El, lips and sleeves splattered with blood, marches into the bathroom. They all follow.

Steve doesn't look when they get inside. The others do, though. The others gasp.

It takes Steve a second to realize that they can see it.

Then there's the sound of shattering glass and the mirror breaks and falls apart. They all jump away from it, watchful for debris. El does not, staring at the wall behind the mirror like it personally did her wrong.

"How could we see it?" Nancy asks, sounding breathless. "El, how could we see it?"

El doesnt answer, still glaring at the wall. A few moments pass before she finally looks over. "They're fighting it." She states. "You're still hidden, but the monster is fighting it now."

That dreadful news stops them all. "It's fighting the entire thing now?" Jonathan asks.

El nods. "It still doesn't know about you." She assures. "I think it was just trying something new."

Nancy seems to get it. "Instead of just focusing on Steve, it was trying to get rid of what you're doing all together."

El nods. They all shudder.

When they rest for the night, they lock the door for the first time. It won't protect them, not at all, but it gives them the comfort they need to find sleep.

They stop at a sports center the next day.

"You really want to get shown up, Sinclair?" Steve taunts, watches Lucas crack his knuckles. "I'm on the basketball team, kid, you aren't even playing rec yet."

"Watch yourself before I break your ankles." Lucas snips back, dribbling a basketball as they head towards the courts with the others. "You'll be eating your words."

"My money's on Steve." Dustin says, holding up multiple twenty dollar bills that they all got from different places. Lucas looks offended.

"Hey!"

Lucas is surprisingly good, but it's nowhere near enough to stand a chance. After that Billy steps up to the challenge, and is barely any better than Lucas, almost all of it thanks to his added height. Then they watch Mike and Will play against each other, which is funny given how bad they play. Max and El go next, which is only better because both are much more athletic than the previous two. El doesn't know any of the rules, but she's a surprisingly quick learner.

They change to volleyball afterwards, which Nancy dominates in even though none of them have played it outside of gym class. It's five versus five at the end, two of the older kids on each team. Steve is lucky enough to get Nancy on his team, and even though they also have Dustin and Will, Max evens it out quite well. In the end it's a close game with them barely winning.

They take a nap on the court afterwards, sprawled out and tired from a surprisingly energetic game. They then find an indoor tennis court and do it all over again, this time with Mike somehow being the expert.

Besides that the day passes uneventfully. They make it to Ohio the next day and decide to break there for a few days close to the border to Indiana. While they have the framework of a plan, they really need to iron it out before attempting to go in, or else they will get themselves killed.

They decide to set up in a decent sized town, one with enough restaurants and fast food joints that they don't have to go to grocery stores and actually make food. Steve still does, the first night, mostly because he had an idea and he wanted to do it before he probably most likely dies within the next week. The kids enjoy it though, which makes him happier than he thought it would. Dustin calls him mom as a joke and the others parrot in and Steve pretends to be upset with it.

"No seconds for any of you." Is his reply, and he grins at the chorus of aws as he goes back to the kitchen counter, where his friends are snickering at his apron.

"You look like the wife in a show my parents watch." Nancy teases. "He's not wrong."

"No seconds for you either." He says while giving her seconds. Then giving Jonathan some as he makes doe eyes. "Who knew I'd be a natural cook?"

"And all it took was getting stranded to figure that out." Billy mutters, but it's good naturedly and they all giggle. "Look at the top shelf."

They all look at the assortment of wine lining the top shelf of the kitchen. 

Jonathan frowns. "It tastes bad." He warns.

Billy scoffed. "Why do they drink it so much, then?"

Nancy looks back at the kids, checking. While they aren't looking, she grabs one off the shelf (after getting a stool) and pours a tiny bit of it into a single glass. "Let's see what all the fuss is about."

She takes a sip. Makes a face. Jonathan grins. "Told you."

"Come on, don't take his side." Billy takes the glass from her and swallows almost all of it at once. He proceeds to gag. "Ew, what the fuck-"

Steve takes off the apron, taking the glass and finishes it off. He wrinkles his nose. It burns his throat. "Yeah, you were right."

Billy coughs. "I think I'm dying."

The kids don't pay them any mind.

The glass door that leads to the backyard shatters.

The kids go quiet. Everyone stares at the door, because no one has been near it to cause it to break apart like that. Beyond the door, the night is pretty and silent. There's not even a breeze.

Steve feels a gaze on him. El is staring at the door, staring at something he can't see.

"Steve." Her voice is full of warning, full of confusion. Something startlingly similar to a footstep vibrates along the floor, yet none of them moved. "Steve."

Another footstep. Another. Faster. It's running.

He's not sure what tells him to move, where it tells him to go. Something's running towards him, yet he can't see what it is, even though it can see him. Maybe it's that last shred of self preservation, maybe it's El's warning, but the moment that thing starts running Steve is running too.

There's a scream. Steve weaves around a chair, feels something ghost against his neck and watches out of the corner of his eye as that chair is thrown to the side by an invisible force. More screams, people shout his name. El yells something, something inhuman roars, and he hits the wall near the front door. The invisible thing is no longer moving, and El's bleeding from her nose, hands up and strained. Steve feels something touch his hand from where it's against the wall, and he jerks away.

But then there's another roar, El's frustrated scream, and the footsteps start barreling towards him again.

A hand grabs his arm, yanks him towards them. He feels again the ghost of something, but the thing keeps going and the wall he was just at gains a new indent. Jonathan is staring at him wide eyed, holding his arm.

"Don't!" El shouts, and Jonathan lets him go like he burned him. "It'll become aware!"

Another roar. Another scream. He glances towards the table, towards the kids. They're all horrified, even though they can see as much as he can. 

Steve backs up, away from where the monster must be.

El screams his name.

Something wraps around his foot.

He stumbles and falls.

The world flickers, too quick for Steve to see anything. El yells, frustrated. Steve tries to get up, unable to remove whatever's holding his leg. Whatever it is tugs, almost experimentally. He's dragged along a few inches, yelping at the suddenness of it.

A kitchen knife lands only an inch away from his foot, Nancy hacking at something she can't see. It works though, and Steve feels the thing loosen, enough that he's able to get up and get away.

Another roar. The world flickers again, this time for longer. He sees the monster, held up against the wall, almost struggling, before it flickers back into place. El's bleeding heavily, her eyelids are fluttering.

Another pounding step, another. This time, though, it's not towards him.

El's eyes widen.

Then she's flung into a nearby wall.

More screaming. Steve's eyes go wide. Before he's able to do anything, the pounding footsteps pick up and something once again latches around his leg, this time more of a hand compared to before. He's yanked across the ground, dragged towards the shattered glass. He grabs the kitchen knife Nancy used, tries to stab at something he can't see. There's a bellow, a roar of pain.

Something grabs him around the neck.

He's pulled up into the air, black dancing in his vision as his neck is squeezed to the point of almost breaking. He's able to try and stab it one more time before he loses his grip on the knife, it clattering to the floor below him. His hands spasm as he tries to find purchase on an invisible enemy, kicking out at nothing as his heart pounds in his ears.

He's barely conscious when it decides it's enough, letting him fall limply to the floor as it lets go. Steve hacks and coughs, barely noticing the grip return to his leg. Not noticing it dragging him away again.

There's a fight, he thinks. His vision is gone, but he sees blurry shapes throwing chairs, stabbing knives at it. Someone grabs at him, tries to pull him away. There's a roar, but the thing can't see them, just like they can't see it. A stalemate, almost.

But not quite.

Sharp glass cuts into his back. A soft lullaby is whispered into his mind. A haunting echo of a roar.

He knows no more.

He dreams of a golden brown sky, of twin worlds facing each other. One of the worlds is vast and barren, covered in wastelands and mountain ranges. He sits on the ground and watches, unimaginable alien-like creatures stumbling around him.

Up above him, looming but not threatening, is the monster.

"You are everything." A voice said, though he's not sure if it's his own. "You could be everything, yet you decided to be nothing."

The gigantic beast does not answer, does not speak a word, yet Steve smiles like he had heard an answer.

"Does it not get boring? Do you not long for more? Or am I giving emotions to a creature that doesn't even have sentience?"

Still no answer. And yet there is laughter.

"I wonder how much of our goals is me, and how much is you. Do you influence my mind the way I previously thought, or does my lust for vengeance drive me so powerfully that I only imagine a second voice when there is none?"

Silence. The looming creature does not move.

"Have I gone insane? Have I trapped a magnificent creature in a restrained body just so I can, one day, get revenge on a little girl who knew no better? Or are you here with me, guiding me as I go?"

Nothing. Above them, farther than he can see, the twin worlds crackle.

"Lead away, my guiding voice. Lead me to salvation, or damnation."

Chapter Text

There's eyes staring at him, when he wakes up. Familiar eyes. "Ah, you're awake."

The magic man from his youth, or maybe One, stands in front of him.

He's older now. His hair is messy, cut not too neatly. There's one large scar going down one side of his face, a grisly burn backdropping it. Almost a third of his face is disfigured due to it, and he seems to have the same scar on one of his hands, but besides that he seems pretty healthy for being in what seems to be a parallel dimension for multiple years. 

What's worse is that whatever thing El did is no longer working. The world is as it should be, dull and gray and very very terrifying. Steve's looking through almost a window at One, framed by black vines, encasing him in. He goes to speak only to realize there's one in his mouth.

Oh fucking- he's going to be sick.

"That won't do." He says, but makes no move to remove the vine. Steve glares at him, unable to respond. "You don't need to speak to respond, Steve Harrington. I understand you just fine."

He should be surprised by that, but at this point he's not sure anything would surprise him anymore. 

His body is almost completely numb, he can barely even feel the vine going down his throat. He seems to be pretty much paralyzed as well, the only thing he can move being his eyes. He glares at One and thinks about how magic is supposed to be fun and isn't supposed to screw him over in the future.

One shrugs. "To be fair, I never imagined this would happen when I first connected us."

First connected what?

He rolls his eyes. "How else would you be able to receive my call back then, without a connection? Children are more aware of their metaphysical surroundings, I've noticed, so I always try to see what children can sense my interference whenever they come around. You were able to, so I established a connection. And please, stop calling me One, it's dreadful. Henry is fine."

Steve would rather call him magic man just to annoy him some more. Retribution for getting him into this mess.

"What is done is done."

Hypocritical much, if he believed that he would've forgave and forgot already with El.

Henry pauses, something cold coming over his expression. There's a pressure in his head, something foreign invading his mind. The pressure recedes along with the foreign feeling and Henry looks a bit peeved. "It's not nice looking through other people's memories."

He has literally kidnapped him and stuffed a vine down his throat.

Henry just smirks. Steve imagines kicking him in the balls and that smirk turns into a scowl. "It's not just you and my sister in here, is it?" He prods, and Steve glares. "There are others with you."

Steve focuses his eyes on a spot just behind Henry and thinks about the fact that Henry called El his sister, and not on his question, because no there was no one else it was just him and El no one else-

"It must be confusing, I realize." Henry continues after a single odd look. "But I know what you know about us. I consider the other children of that lab my family of sorts. I even tried to help them escape, before Eleven so foolishly-"

He scared his family. Scared a little girl so much that she opened a door into another dimension with her fear. That's not just a foolish thing to do.

"You don't know the circumstances. You don't understand." Henry's scarred face morphed into something fierce and angry. Steve had only a moment to feel scared before the pressure descended on his head again, this time more fierce and painful than before. He lets out a muffled scream as claws dig into his mind and pulls him apart. "Oh my, I was only expecting one or two more people, but a whole crew…"

Salty tears run down his cheeks and slip past his lips. A strangled sob leaves him as Henry let's go of his mind, leaving it broken and tattered. His vision swims, his train of thought wrecked.

Henry glances back at him and his delusional state and scoffs. The pressure settles over him again, and he instinctively tries to jerk away. It doesn't hurt this time though, more like a cool cloth settling over his head. His mind resettled slightly, the permanent damage reverted enough to only be temporary. His head cleared and when he blinked he could see.

"You have a whole posse following you." Henry murmurs when he sees that Steve could once again think clearly enough to hold a conversation. "The little ones are too small to be of any use, besides Eleven - how about this. If you stay docile and help me, I'll make sure the little kids get out safely."

Steve doesn't believe him for a single second. Besides that, what about his friends?

"They would be decent hosts for my partner." Henry gestures to something outside of his vision. "If only Eleven wasn't hiding them, I could establish a connection."

A connection. The same fucking thing he did with Steve back at the lab? Wasn't that something-

"Only a select few could feel?" Henry finishes for him, smiling like they were friends. "That is the strangest part about all of this, Steven. It seems that everyone in your entire posse would be able to sense me."

Steve has to squash down his immediate thought of is that why they're the ones stuck here and instead focuses on glaring at Henry. His head aches from whatever Henry had done before, the damage of it all making it hard to do much of anything. Fuck you, he thinks, puts as much venom into as possible, I hope you're stuck here for the rest of eternity, and the monsters turn on you and eat you.

Henry doesn't get angry. He just frowns. "Kids." He scoffs, like he's just seen an annoying child throw a tantrum in a store. He wiggles his fingers, and the vines seem to pull him further in. "Sleep on it, Steve. Just know it's easier if you don't resist."

And, against his will, he falls asleep.

He wakes up to the monster staring at him.

It's the one that had followed them across the country, the watcher as El had called it. It stared at him and it couldn't speak like Henry but it was obviously thinking something that he didn't want to know.

Steve wished he could speak, just to tell it off.

His luck gets worse, though, when the monster takes a step forward. Steve immediately recoils, but he's stuck and he can't move in the mass of vines holding him. The monster walks forward again, and Steve's scream of warning is muffled on the vine going down his throat.

A clawed hand traces the outside of his face, curious in a way. Steve winces as the sharp points of its fingers break skin, carving a circle around the edge of his face. A few spots trickle blood, and all Steve can do is close his eyes and pretend the thing isn't there.

A claw rests on his chest, almost like it can feel his heart beat out of his chest. It stays there for a minute, listens to the chaos happening inside of him. It applies pressure.

The claw breaks through immediately.

Steve panics the moment he feels pain, the claw ripping through flesh like butter on the way to his heart. He cries out, the sound strangled by the vine. Tears stream down his face, because he's about to die.

"Cut it out."

The monster immediately moves away, leaving Steve shaking and trembling. Henry appears in view, glaring at the monster before looking at him. His gaze darkens.

"You were told." Henry's voice is stone cold. "Not to mess with the host." He turns towards the monster, who stands there with no visible change in it's posture. It doesn't look or act scared, almost like it doesn't know it did something wrong. It just stands there, waiting. "Yet you almost kill him."

Henry waves his hand.

The monster explodes.

Steve screams as blood and gore lands on him, covering his entire body in viscera. Henry turns back to him and smiles, covered in just as much filth as him. "Pardon that, my partner is getting antsy. It's never had a human host before."

He's not going to survive long as a human host if that's what it'll do to him.

Henry waves him away. "Once you fully become a host your body will become much more resistant, you'll survive."

Will he? A parasite is taking over his body, every movie he's ever watched says that he doesn't survive that. At least, Steve won't survive. His body, maybe, but Steve-

"Your consciousness will become one with my partner." Henry says, as if that's reassuring. "You will be able to watch the end, as if you're watching a show on television. Not many will get the privilege to survive in any capacity, if you want to think of it that way."

He's just a bit confused that Henry seems to be trying to soothe him. The man practically kidnapped them, made them survive on their own for a year, and now he's assuring him that everything will be alright. Or, at least, he won't completely die.

And yet, if Henry said he'll keep the kids safe, but he also plans on destroying the world or whatever he's doing-

Henry grimaces for a moment. "I keep my promises." He frowns. "They would be safe."

But their parents, their friends and family… they might be safe, but everyone they love and care for would be dead. And for Mike, Will, and Max, who's older siblings would, if Henry's plan worked out, join Steve, then they would lose even more. Not to mention Lucas' and Mike's younger sisters. What happens to all of them?

Henry hums. He doesn't answer. Steve wants to wrap his hands around his neck and squeeze.

The tendril in his throat shifts. Steve tenses.

The thing pulls out, dragging itself out of his throat with little fanfare. Steve chokes on a scream.

"Y-you-" Steve's voice is rough, slurred. "You want revenge on El… why does the whole world have to go?"

"For one, it allowed our 'father' to continually treat us like experiments." Henry studied him, as if looking for something Steve couldn't see. "It didn't stop him, no one helped us. We were made to suffer and the government paid for our tortuous tools."

"And so the rest of us have to die because of them?" Steve tried to move, still trapped as he was. Something pressed against the back of his mind, curious but insistent. It scared him. "People and children who had no control over that, who didn't even know it was happening?"

"All casualties who would probably rather die than be subjected to the things my 'father' would do." Henry waved it off. "Last I heard, he was going to start working on making synthetic superhumans. Unlike Eleven and I, who were born with our powers, he wants to take those already living and give them powers. A cruel fate most would think worse than death, if they knew what it entails."

"Being stuck in a hive mind watching it kill my entire family sounds pretty fucking bad." Steve squeezes his eyes shut as the pressure in his head increases. It feels like it's calling him. He can hear his mother's voice. "Don't."

"Humanity has failed us." Henry's gaze is far away, over the horizon. "At least you will be able to see the world after. Those who are born special will survive. We'll create a new world."

Besides El, who Henry will kill. Along with anyone else who opposes him. His mother sings him a lullaby, soft and sweet, beckoning him. A siren's song, and the melody switches hosts, and Nancy and Jonathan and Billy are calling out to him, reaching out, it's safe here.

"You know, Steve, I like you." Henry's still looking out on the horizon. "You're the first mind I've invaded that hasn't immediately repulsed me. You genuinely care about your friends, and you love those kids like you're they're real big brother." Henry pauses, as if losing his train of thought. He exhales, a fake thing. "If they survive, I'll keep the monsters from killing them, okay?"

Steve could barely hear him over the humming lullaby. It was impossible to ignore, to tune out, and the desire to listen was strong. Even so, he didn't give in, wouldn't let go, because the song was just. too. w r o n g -

He stood in front of a mirror. She stood in front of a mirror. It stood in front of a mirror. They stood in front of a mirror.

He blinked. They blinked. 

They smiled. Their mouth was wrong. Not. enough. t e e t h -

He opened his eyes, shuddered as his body found its center again. His appendages felt wrong, weak and pathetic and not quite right yet, but he's sure that'll fix itself eventually. One stood in front of him, looking him up and down.

He took a moment, looking through his vocabulary, speaking in a language he does and does not know. "It's done."

One does what someone would call a scoff. "You call that done?" He leans forward, swats at his pathetic arms. "You're impatient, what good is it controlling a lump of flesh that could die if you poke it too hard?"

He bares his teeth, which is not human-like. "There are intruders."

"I'll handle them."

"You cannot handle her." He says, rarely ever says, doesn't like to deal with the One who shows after her. Says it anyway, because it's true. "We can."

"Eleven would dig you out of your host the moment she sees you." One makes a face he now understands as irritated. Irritated, meaning angry, meaning violent, meaning death. "You're not anchored in yet."

"She would only hurt this body." He pats himself, tiny appendages on appendage rubbing against his head. It's rough, stings when he applies pressure. Like claws, but weaker. Nails, they're called. "And even if we're separated, we would come back together. This body would come back."

One frowns, his expression is doubtful, and he doesn't have time to figure out what that means. He could've sent another to go instead, but One had killed it and it takes time to make another.

Impatient and eager to test his new being out, he steps past One, towards where he's sure he can feel the foreign presence approaching. 

One grabs his arm. Two fingers press against his head.

Something him and not him squirms and writhes and One looks defeated. "I'll handle them, you take the host and cross over."

The command unnerved him. Cross over. Cross over. He had wanted to before, but One warned against it. Said that if they closed it while he was still there, he would die. Or, at least, lose the part of him that cross over. Now, though, he has a new being, one from there, able to cross over with no worry. 

And yet- "You cannot defeat her."

One looks very, very angry for a moment. He doesn't understand. The foreign presence is getting closer. As if they're moving faster.

He tries again. "We both cross over?" He asks, offers, because in the grand scheme of things, he sees now, the intruders mean very little. Very much, he means. The intruders, they mean so much-

One takes in a deep breath, exhales, and he watches and copies it, before realizing that this new being does it automatically. He's never had to do that before. "Let's go."

They start towards the cross over, the door, and One orders the rest of him to stay where he's most vulnerable and guard him. With himself protected, they make haste towards t h e -

He blinks, looks over at Henry. "Who are you doing this for?"

Henry pauses, but does not stop moving. He studies him, surprised. "What?"

"Who are you doing this for?" He asks again, a simple question. "Yourself, I suspect, and yet the world you intend to create would have you just as lonely and tortured as the one you live in now."

Henry pauses then, grabs his shoulder and looks deep into his eyes, searching. He lets go after some prodding, a pressure on his mind that fades just as quickly. He looks reassured, and yet still suspicious. "Who are you doing this for, then?" He asks, defensive.

"You." He answers simply, because that's always been the answer. "It's always been you."

Henry stutters, looks at him again. There's something adjacent to fear in his eyes. "Who are you?"

He shrugs, because there's no answer to that question. "I am what you wanted me to be." Would be a synonym. "Before you I was everything. I was nothing. I was all I could want. I was starving for more. I was silent. I was thoughtless. Now I have a mouth." He points at it, hums. "Now I understand your language. Your vocabulary. Your emotions."

"There's nothing to understand." Henry mutters, and he can feel the doorway nearby, coming closer. "Just do what I shaped you to do."

And he would, and yet this new being… it gave him c u r i o s i t y -

"You shaped me using yourself." He reminded. "I was always aware of your past. I'm just only now beginning to understand it."

Gritted teeth. Clenched fists. He didn't understand the hostility.

Well, there's a lot he still has left to learn.

Chapter Text

He stands in front of an abomination, a creature of untold strength and wisdom. Something magnificent yet horrifying. It stared at him.

He stares back.

"I am everything." It says to him.

He cannot do much more than nod.

"But I do not want to be."

This time, he finds his voice. "Can I help?"

The creature looks at him. It's a mass of dust, particles, a swarm of black flies, dark moths, dripping tar. It has no eyes. It still looks at him.

"Let me be nothing."

Steve doesn't know how to help. "What should I do?"

The creature does not respond.

There are… things, that stop them at the door.

The things… they're called humans, he now remembers. Hosts. The bigger ones, could be. Still weak, but not as fragile as the smaller ones. The smaller o n e s -

They shout a name he is vaguely aware of. There is a smaller one, in the front. It's with the big ones, in front of the smaller ones. Protecting, is the word for it. He's not sure why.

It does not like Henry, that's for sure. Or maybe… maybe it does? Maybe it d o e s -

He ponders that for a second. The things, humans, they're speaking. To him, maybe, to Henry, more likely. He does not hear it, does not put effort into hearing it. He ponders and wonders and wishes for nothing-

Then one of the humans, one of the bigger ones, hold something out. He doesn't recognize it, he does recognize it. It recoils in the human's limbs, there's a sound he can't not hear, and then Henry is stumbling backwards and there's pain-

It's not his own, is what he first recognizes. Henry is also connected to the hive mind, albeit distantly. He connected to it in the beginning, made him what he is now. They are 'partners', they work together, they are

nothingnothingnothingnothingnothing

Then the little human in the front holds out a hand, and he has a moment to realize that One was right before there's a pressure in his mind, their mind, and his head is ripped in two, mind split in half. It's tearing him apart, trying to seperate it from itself. He is not meant to be seperated. Once he is together, he should not lose a part of himself, he is e v e r y t h i n g -

A sharp pop. He winks out of existence, a flame being extinguished.

Steve groans, rolls onto his side (when did he hit the ground?) and throws up. Which, he thinks is fair. "Jesus Christ-"

A loud bang, the sound of a gun firing. A muffled scream of pain. Hands grab the back of his shirt and pull him up. "Glad to have you back, Harrington-!"

Billy practically drags him over to the others, who reach out to hold onto every little part of him they can grab, mostly clothes. Steve allows it because there's little much else he can do to stop them at this point.

Fuck his mouth tastes like shit-

Nancy, who is currently holding a gun, cocks the thing like she's used to using one and snarls. "Everyone, go."

Following some unspoken rule, the group starts shuffling back, towards the doorway back. Steve finally sees Henry, half kneeling and covered in blood from nicks and scratches. Steve doesn't know if Henry is just super durable, or if Nancy is missing.

"No." He moans in pain, raises a hand, and the entire groups stops, a ringing pressure pushing down on them from all sides. There's a startled gasp, someone yelps, before El raises her own hand and Henry screams, holds his hands over his ears and curls into the floor.

Above and far (but not far enough) away, Steve sees i t -

The creature does not move. It's a swarm of black particles, pressed together to form something bigger and oddly spider-like. It stands above all of them, and yet it does not move. It does not take action. Henry does not order it to go against them, and so it will not.

I am everything. I want to be nothing.

Blood leaks from Henry's eyes. Both of El's nostrils bleed. Steve stares at the monster in the background. At the world it lives in.

This world was dangerous, vicious. This world has monsters that would not hesitate to kill them, and yet the monsters stay still as the human blocks the way.

Nancy raises her gun, eyes cold. Durable or not, she wouldn't miss this time.

The creature, so far away and yet so close, watches. It watches, and does not interfere. Brainless, yet not mindless. At least, no longer.

Steve finds his footing. Billy makes a startled noise when Steve slides out of his grip, walking past the others and towards Henry. They all make several noises of disagreement, and Steve raises a hand to quiet them.

He kneels in front of him. Henry glances at him, scoffs and looks away. He's an adult, Steve knows, and yet he doesn't feel like one. Doesn't feel like a kid either.

He waits until Henry meets his eyes. Gestures to the monster behind them. "Turn it back." He says, voice soft. "To what it used to be."

Henry squints his eyes at him, disbelieving. He laughs. His friends are silent behind him, yet they've all moved closer. "Why should I?"

"El can do it if you won't." Steve shrugs. "I just thought I'd make a deal with you first."

Henry raises an eyebrow, but doesn't scoffs or outright deny him. "What could you possibly give me?"

The monster was and was not sentient. It did not think, it did not feel, until it did. It had no memory, and yet it remembered everything. It had a mind, but no brain. The moment it was given one, everything clicked into place.

Steve leaned in close, whispered into his ear. "I'll make that 'father' of yours suffer."

Henry had made the monster. He had shaped it in his own image. He pressed his memories into it. Had told it one thing when it meant another, and the monster could never differentiate, because it never had the ability to.

Henry may want a lot of things, but revenge on El is not at the top of that list.

Steve leans back. Henry stares at him, considers him truly for the first time. It's quiet for a moment.

Henry raises a hand. The world shudders. Behind him, the monster collapses like a house of cards. Black particles billow around the area like a fog cloud. The swarm condenses, before dispersing like it was never there.

Steve's teeth are red when he grins. "It's been a pleasure."

He backs up, takes Nancy's gun, and shoots him in the head.

Durable or not, Henry did not survive that.

He hands the gun back, keeping his eyes away from Nancy's face so she couldn't interrogate him with her expression alone. He did the same with Billy for the same reason, opting to lean on Jonathan instead. Steve couldn't leave him alive after what he planned on doing, after what he saw in that monster's mind, embedded on it by Henry. Not with the anger and hatred he held towards El.

(He couldn't let him stay here alone, slowly wasting away in isolation, either.)

"What…" Dustin's the first one to speak up. The kids had stayed further back, not of their own volition, and so hopefully didn't see that grisly end. "What did you say to him? To get him to do it?"

Steve shrugged. His vision doubled. "Vengeance on the person who actually deserves it."

The older kids seem to understand immediately. Jonathan supports him as he turns back towards the others. 

El steps up to him first, eyes scanning his face and the area around them. She presses her head against his for a moment, and Steve feels a brush of something against his mind before it disappears as quickly as it came. El is smiling when she pulls away. “It's gone.”

Relief sweeps through him, and his knees almost buckle at the force of it. “Good.” He says, it's all he can say. “Let's go home.”

Entering their world is a muted affair. Steve feels it deep within him, them making it through the gate, but he doesn't see a difference. The walls surrounding them are still covered in tendrils, though they are all still, silent. As if the thing they were previously connected to no longer sends them commands.

It's quiet, dark, empty. El turns around, raises her hands. There's a sharp crack, and the ground seems to shake. The world shifts, like it's realigning itself. As if everything has been tilted on its axis, and was only now reorienting itself.

The vines wilt, shivrel, and die. Dissolves into nothing. They're suddenly in a strange place, abandoned and uncared for. 

“We're home.” El confirms once she's done, stumbles for a moment. Billy catches her before she can fall. “This is my home.”

And then she passes out, which is fair, though it scares Steve when it happens. She's still breathing, though, and he can't be scared in front of the kids. Not now. Not when they were so close.

Nancy leads the way, still holding her gun. The building is long abandoned, dark and decrepit, would start to rot before long. Any relief and happiness they should have felt by being home doesn't happen. If anything, Steve feels another version of trapped.

(What if El’s papa realizes that they're back? What if he sends people to get them, before they can escape?)

Then Steve spots something hidden behind a half closed door. He extracts himself from Dustin and Lucas, hurries over to his find. It's a phone, right at his eye level on the wall. While the chance of it working is low, if it does-

“Guys!” He calls them over, dials his house’s number. Something twists in his stomach when it starts ringing, a nastier version of hope.

Everything is silent, for a moment, but not really. Steve knows true silence now, this does not count. There is tiny noises everywhere, white noise creating a background that's both soothing and jarring. He'll have to get use to that again-

“Hello, this is the Harrington residence, who's speaking?”

An unbecoming sound rushes out of Steve's mouth, a half sob and laugh mixed with something else. “Mom?”

The hardest part is coming up with the story.

Nancy creates one pretty quickly, going off of the little he told his mother. The problem is the children, who want to tell the truth, even though they know no one will believe it. They're able to convince them not to, right before Steve's parents arrive with half of Hawkins police force with them.

It's a bit of a blur after that.

They try to seperate them, he knows. The kids hate it, scream and cry and hold onto Steve mostly, probably because they almost lost him only an hour ago. They stop trying after a while, which leaves the other older kids to sneak off and answer the police’s questions.

(That barely works too. The kids are exhausted, don't let go of him, but if they notice Nancy or Jonathan or Billy are missing they start kicking up a fuss once more. It turns into a game of sneak away, almost.)

Like planned, the police rule it as a kidnapping. There was a town wide power outage the day they disappeared, the whole town seemed to crack and split and dissolve a little, enough that most churches became filled with people believing in the beginning of the rapture. It ended only after a few minutes, and once people gained their bearings the teachers started to notice that they were missing a few students.

They tell the police that they don't know what happened. One moment they were in class, the next they were here, trapped with no way to escape and a voice from a hidden person talking to them. They say it's the voice of El’s papa, and the police give her some photos of employees, wait until she confirms who her papa is. Some scientist named Dr. Brenner.

He hears from the police, who's talking to his father (his father shouldn't be privy to this info, he definitely threw his money around) that Dr. Brenner had no children, and that El was nine years old with a tattoo and was most likely a victim even before this entire fiasco. 

Then the other parents start to arrive, and Steve can finally breathe again as his kids rush to their parents, sobbing and crying and laughing, even. Billy and Max stay off to the side, trying to explain to another officer about their own separate situation, when they were kidnapped and where from, who to call.

Then, finally, his mom is right in front of him, and he can already feel the tears form in his eyes. Still, he speaks before he can break down. “Can we take in El? She has nowhere to go and she can't go back to her papa.”

And it's a bit manipulative, because he knows his mother will agree to anything right now, but it's for a good purpose. El was laying down on a stretcher, currently, trying to pay attention to the medics and the police, wrapped up tight in a shock blanket. She seemed a little lost, very alone.

“Of course, sweetie.” His mother says, he knew she would. She's crying, she hasn't stopped crying, and it gets very blurry after that, because everything else is just a torrent of emotions.

They're in a weird situation.

They're not allowed to go home, not yet at least. Not until they find Brenner, so they're in a safe house. Their parents hated it, wanted them back now, but they decided to instead rotate in chaperoning them, because the police couldn't post someone at each of their houses to watch out for a serial kidnapper. Now they have multiple guards watching all of them at once, and their parents know it's safer.

Billy and Max are supposed to see their parents soon - they're flying in tomorrow apparently. El is currently in state custody, but the Harringtons have temporary custody over her. Everyone else is just going through the motions, living day by day. It's weird, strange, knowing a year has passed, all of which you missed. It's summer, school starts again in three months. His parents plan to buy them all tutors, so that hopefully they can skip a year, keep up with their studies as if nothing had happened.

Everything has happened. Nothing was the same. What's the point in acting normal anymore?

Jonathan swiped a camera from somewhere and now won't stop taking pictures of them. Billy snaps at whatever parent is taking care of them, but is the first to comfort one of the kids when they have a nightmare. Nancy's hands won't stop shaking, as if straining around a gun she no longer holds.

Steve blinks and sees the other world. Feels blood on his hands. Hears a gunshot in the silence. Does not recognize  h i m s e l f-

It's fine, it really is. It's called trauma, apparently, that's what the woman the police brought in to talk to them says. She says that since he experienced it, sometimes his brain will make it happen again, when something makes him remember it. A trigger or something, he didn't really understand, but she told him to breathe deeply and remind himself that he's no longer there, that he's out, escaped, and that it's okay, it's okay.

Then one day one of the police officers brought in their DnD hoard. He sets it all out and shows the kids how to play, gathers everyone around to make a character and pretend to be them for a few hours. It's a one shot, apparently, and it's fun, is freeing, and Mike doesn't sleep that night, reads through the books he left and studied harder for it than Steve has in his entire life.

After that, he makes the story, and the other kids follow. It's nice, good for them. Steve likes to watch from the kitchen with the other kids. 

Each parent who chaperones act the same, yet a little different. They all pamper them, of course, but when Steve and Nancy and Jonathan and Billy start cleaning up after a meal is finished, getting the kids to bed and tucking them in, acting like the adults, they pause, almost like they're confused. It confuses them even more when the kids go to them, not to the parents. Will had fallen asleep during a movie and woke up from a nightmare, and while Joyce was right there and willing to help Will lunged towards Jonathan and Billy instead. 

They slept in different rooms now, at least. Not the first day, of course. Not even the first week. But they did, eventually. They got used to it, though Steve doesn't think they'll ever prefer it. Not again, not after everything.

Then the call comes in. Two detectives knock on the door and whisper in quiet tones to Steve’s father, “We found him.”

Dr. Brenner. They found him, he's in custody, and when one of the detectives pull him to the side and gently prods Steve about how they found them, how he got those injuries (something he had been tight lipped about), he sees Henry’s resigned face, feels the memories of his torture combined with his own, and tells the detective that Brenner had hurt him, a punishment for trying to escape.

They go home. It is not easy.

Being so far away from everyone means that Steve can't sleep through the night. El, who’s adoption paperwork is almost complete, sneaks into his room most nights. She curls up nearby and presses her hand to his head, as if expecting to find something foreign in his mind. The others have their own plights, even if they're silent about it, but Lucas and Dustin do the worse. Everyone else has someone else with them - Mike and Nancy, Will and Jonathan, Max and Billy. Lucas and Dustin go home to a family who don't know the truth, and completely break down.

It's not good. Their families try to make it work, but in the end Lucas takes the Harrington's guestroom and Dustin goes for an extended stay with the Wheelers, because the separation was harming them more than anything.

That lasted for a month, a month of family frustration as their parents poked and prodded, tried to discover what happened to them with no avail. No one would tell them, because there wasn't anything to tell. Not until the end had it gotten unbearable, and if they told the truth then someone might realize Brenner didn't do this to them.

It took time, and patience, and more willing power than Steve thought he had. Yet in the end it made a difference. The nightmares became less frequent, Dustin and Lucas went back to their homes. It was a close thing, but the Harringtons had hired the best tutors, and each child should have no problem sticking to their regular grade. While some parents didn't like the idea of forcing them to skip, the lady who talked to them all said that having to be in a new grade with new people, missing their old friends, would be much worse.

Steve just debates being homeschooled for the rest of forever. Tommy's gonna call him something rude for being kidnapped. Says he's not manly or something. Whatever it is that mattered to Steve before all this happened.

(Tommy doesn't do that. Tommy is actually pretty kind about it all. Tommy even buys El a candy bar, tells her the first time he comes over that if she needs anything and he's around to not hesitate to ask. Steve supposes that his absence affected even him.)

Brenner has several life sentences by the end of the summer. His kids are smiling more and more with each passing day. Billy calls from across the country because Max loves talking to El, and Billy can't hide his need to check in. Nancy and Jonathan are attached at the hip, the hip that is Steve Harrington, and more often than not they are together at one of their houses. Steve doesn't wake up alone most days, and he doesn't know if it benefits him or them more.

It's one of those nights where he wakes up, stuck in a pile of limbs between the two, eyes stuck to the wall and seeing the monster above him instead of his ceiling, being back in that world and everything it entails. He stares at it, for once not afraid, and it stares back.

It is everything. It is nothing. If it could talk, Steve thinks it might say thank you.

The monster dissolves into nothing. The image fades into the darkness of his room. Jonathan drools against his shoulder. Nancy snores loudly. The first day of school is tomorrow.

Steve closes his eyes.