Chapter Text
April 2, 1957
The record sits on a concrete dais much larger than it is. It looks small there, insignificant. But the scientists in their white lab coats regard it with seriousness as they press together the two sides of a great steel box around it. It’s clearly a struggle for both of them, but eventually the two halves make contact with a loud, clanging thud.
The scientist on the right, a young woman, crouches down and begins doing up the complex locks and latches on the bottom of the box. Her partner, who’s about her age but significantly taller, reaches up to do the same at the top of the box. They meet in the middle, and then they leave the room.
Once the pair of them are out and the reinforced door has slammed closed behind them, the older man seated at the table, looking through a wall of glass at the box, pulls a lever. A small, red light flicks on on his console, but nothing else seems to happen. The light flickers, and the man watches it. He counts seconds under his breath.
“. . . seven, eight”—the light is solid—“nine, ten, eleven”—it flickers off, comes back on for a sliver of a second—“twelve”—it’s off again, and this time, it doesn’t come back on. The man pushes the lever back to its initial position. A few seconds pass. Nothing seems different in the room with the steel box, and yet the man looks excited.
The door to the room opens again, and the two young scientists reenter. Together, they undo all the locks and latches they did up before, and they pry the box open.
Where the record had sat there is now something else: a stone, by the looks of things. Black. Smaller than the record, but thicker. The young woman approaches it. A few cracks in the rock let off a faint reddish glow. She reaches down. The glow seems to intensify. The tip of her finger touches the rock.
***
May 27, 1989
Michael Wheeler stands in the bathroom, clutching the rim of the sink, the water running. He meets his own eyes in the mirror, but he isn’t really seeing them. Instead, he sees El, standing in the gate until she was enveloped in white light. El, holding onto him in her mindscape. In the military compound, a door, opened and then closed seemingly of its own accord. El, diving out of the gate just before the white flash—
Mike splashes water on his face and takes a long, deep breath. He turns the water off. He wipes his face with the hand towel. He looks at himself in the mirror again, blankly.
Outside of the bathroom, there’s the sound of voices and movement and clattering dishes. Mike hesitates one last time with his hand on the door handle, but then he pushes out into the chaos.
Dinner is over, and dessert, and the long lingering at the table that came after, and now everyone is trying to help Karen do the clean up. Max and Lucas have inserted themselves at the sink and are currently bickering about whether the soap should be put on the sponge or directly on the dish (Max says sponge, Lucas says dish).
Dustin is scraping plates and trying to convince Max and Lucas that it doesn’t matter where the soap goes, just that they actually start helping.
Karen is in the kitchen too, putting things away with one hand and holding her wine glass with the other. She seems torn between amusement and annoyance.
In the dining room, Will’s cleaning off the table, but he keeps looking up towards the kitchen as he does. Mike watches him. He seems entertained, and there’s a deep affection under it. He looks happy. Mike's expression sours slightly.
Mike enters the fray, though there aren’t really any tasks left to do, and once Will’s done with the table and back in the kitchen, it’s too crowded.
“Thank you all for helping,” says Karen, “but I’ll take it from here.”
There’s a chorus of “are you sure”s and “thank you”s and suddenly Mike is showing his friends out the door.
Lucas asks Will, “Do you want a ride home, man?”
“It’s okay,” says Will, “I don’t mind biking. Besides, I don’t think my bike would fit in your car.”
“We could make it work,” says Lucas, but Max laughs.
“No, we couldn’t,” she says. “I think you’ve got the world’s smallest car.”
“I could drive you,” says Dustin. “I’ve got a bike rack.”
“Really,” Will insists, “it’s fine. I like the fresh air.”
Reluctantly, they load into their cars, Lucas and Max together. Mike watches from the garage as the cars pull away and Will grabs his bike.
Will’s about to get on it when he says, “Oh, shit. I think I left my sketchbook in your basement. Let me go grab it.”
Mike goes in with him. Down in the basement, Holly and her friends’ game has ended, and they’re piled around each other on the couch, watching The Wizard of Oz.
Mike stands on the stairs as Will goes and grabs the sketchbook from the floor. He can’t see the screen from here, but he can hear Judy Garland singing “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” He’s so distracted by the song and the uncertainty that’s been plaguing him all day that he startles a little when Will reaches the step below him.
“Got it,” says Will, quiet enough to not interrupt the movie.
“Great,” says Mike. He turns and starts up the stairs, Will just behind him.
“Are you okay, Mike?” Will asks. “Is it something about El? What you were telling us earlier?”
Mike hesitates. They’re through the door now, and he closes it, but doesn’t walk on. Will waits, patient as ever.
“I don’t know,” says Mike, voice hushed. “This is going to sound so strange, but. . . about what I said today about El. I wasn’t entirely honest, or at least, I don’t think I was.”
Will’s face falls a little, but he doesn’t interrupt.
“I’m not sure if El ever pulled me into her mind. And I don’t know if I remember seeing her flicker in the gate, or seeing the door close. I’m not sure if I remember seeing her die. . .” He trails off.
“What do you mean?” Will asks. “Whether it was Kali’s illusion or actually El, we all saw it.”
“I know,” says Mike, frustrated. He runs a hand through his hair. “I know that. But it’s like my memory is changing. Like suddenly I started remembering things differently today, and I know that it’s a different memory, because I remember thinking about her dying before. And now I don’t know what’s real and what isn’t.” He looks up at Will’s face for the first time. “I feel like I’m going crazy.”
Will squeezes his shoulder. “I said the same thing to you once,” he says, “and do you remember what you told me? We’ll both go crazy together.”
“Crazy together,” Mike echoes, half a second behind.
“We’ll figure it out,” says Will. “Haven’t we always?” But there’s something a little pained in his face.
“I’m sorry,” says Mike. “I don’t want to be worrying you with this. Not when everything’s finally okay, and you’re happy.”
Will shakes his head. “It’s okay, Mike. I’d much rather you tell me than keep it to yourself.” He nods towards the door. “It’s like Oz, isn’t it? It can’t actually be perfect. At some point, you have to take off the emerald glasses.”
Mike laughs at that. “Okay,” he says. “Thank you. But can you not. . . tell anyone about this yet. I need to think more first, or something. I don’t know.”
“Of course, Mike.” Will’s voice is soft. “Not before you’re ready.”
***
Robin, Nancy, Steve, and Jonathan make their way out onto the front steps of the Squawk. The sun has gone down now, and the main light source is the letters on the side of the building. As they make their way down the steps towards Steve’s car, Robin hesitates.
It’s Nancy who notices. “Robin?” she asks. Steve and Jonathan stop as well and turn to look.
“Sorry,” says Robin. “I don’t want to be more of a downer than this has already been, but. . . Do you think we’re ever going to feel normal again? Because I just. . . I haven’t really felt like myself since it all ended. . .”
“Is this about what happened with Vickie?” Steve asks.
“No,” says Robin. “Well, yes, sort of. It’s related, for sure. But it’s more than that. It’s everything. I just. . . I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“No,” says Nancy. “I understand. I’ve felt weird too. Like I still can’t quite believe that it’s over and life’s still going.”
“Trauma, right?” says Jonathan, in a tone that’s half a joke. Nancy gives a half-hearted chuckle. “I think it’ll take time, but eventually we’ll learn to feel normal again.”
“But it’ll never quite be the same as it was before,” says Steve. “I still feel like I’m holding my breath all the time. All those years of fighting, and then one attack, one bomb, and it’s over. It felt. . . too easy, almost.”
“Yeah,” says Nancy.
“But it’s been a year and a half,” says Jonathan. “It’s over.”
No one has anything to say to that, but they all nod and they climb into Steve’s car, Robin riding shotgun. “I can’t believe you guys are leaving tomorrow,” Steve says to the backseat.
“I can’t believe you’re letting Robin drive us to the airport in your car,” says Nancy.
“Me neither,” says Steve. He looks over at Robin. “If there’s so much as a scratch on this thing when you bring it back. . . I only just finished repairing all the damage Henderson did to it.”
“It’ll be fine, Steve,” says Robin. “I passed my test, didn’t I?”
“Barely,” says Steve.
The headlights of the car recede towards Hawkins, and the road outside the Squawk is left in the faint purple glow of the sign, something close to darkness. The W flickers off then on again, but there’s no one there to see it.
***
In the woods, a heavy duty flashlight casts its beam at an odd angle along the debris on the ground. It sits there, as if discarded, next to Jim Hopper. There’s an old box a few feet in front of him, where he used to leave food for El.
“Hey, kid,” he says to the air. “Your friends all graduated high school today, and I proposed to Joyce. She said yes. I think we’re going to move. Go east. Get out of Hawkins. Lots of people are leaving. Will’s gonna be off to college; the rest of them too. Feels like this town’s emptying out.
“So that means that one of these days, I’m going to stop coming here to talk to you. I know you probably can’t hear it, and even if somehow you can, you’d probably be able to hear it just as well from Montauk, but I still don’t like leaving you here. But I think it’s what I have to do. Make a fresh start. I think you’d understand.
“I wish that you were coming with us. Or really that you’d graduated today and were off to college too. Or whatever else you wanted to do with your life. It’s not fair, what happened. None of your life’s been fair. I wanted to fix that for you, but I guess I couldn’t. Maybe that’s being a parent. There’s no shielding your kids from everything.”
He sighs, wipes the tears from his eyes.
“But I am here with good news, today. It’s really starting to feel like it’s all over, I think. Like we can finally move forward.”
He grunts a little as he pushes himself to his feet, taking the flashlight with him. The beam shines on the old box. Hopper walks over to it and opens it. He takes out the soggy and warped Eggos box inside and exchanges it with a pristine one from his bag. His hand lingers on the lid of the box for a few seconds once it’s closed.
“Thanks, kid,” he finally says. Then he turns and makes his way back to his squad car.
***
“Somewhere over the rainbow
Way up high”
From above, Hawkins looks tiny, dotted with glows from houses and streetlights. Only a few cars move through the streets, little red and yellow lights creeping along.
“There’s a land that I heard of
Once in a lullaby”
Jonathan climbs out of Steve’s car, and now it’s just Steve and Robin. As they pull back onto the road, Steve turns to Robin, and says, “We’re going to be okay.” Almost imperceptibly, she nods.
“Somewhere over the rainbow
Skies are blue”
Jonathan walks into the living room of the Byers-Hopper home. Will and Joyce are both sitting at the table, and Will is adding colored pencil to a sketch of a familiar girl standing on a cliff, looking over a waterfall. In the smooth, even strokes of his hand, the sky turns a brilliant blue.
“And the dreams that you dare to dream
Really do come true”
Hopper enters the house just after Jonathan. Joyce stands up from the table as he does and wraps him in a hug. “Welcome home,” she says into his chest.
“Someday I’ll wish upon a star
And wake up where the clouds are far behind me”
Dustin sits at his desk, holding a college acceptance letter, grinning. “I did it, Eddie,” he whispers.
“Where troubles melt like lemon drops
Away above the chimney tops
That’s where you’ll find me”
The tiny car is parked by Lover’s Lake, headlights off. Inside the car, Lucas and Max lean over the center console to kiss: her hands on his shoulders, his on her waist and in her hair. The night is clear, and the moon reflects off the placid surface of the lake, huge and semicircular.
“Somewhere over the rainbow
Bluebirds fly”
Nancy leans against the counter in the kitchen with her mother, both of them sipping from their twin wine glasses. Karen pours herself a little more, and they clink the glasses together. The logo on the bottle has a bluebird.
“Birds fly over the rainbow
Why, then, oh, why can’t I?”
Upstairs, Mike sits at his desk. Will’s painting hangs on the wall next to him. He goes to the window and looks out over the quiet street. The only movement is the sprinkler turning in its slow, ratcheting circle.
“If happy little bluebirds fly
Beyond the rainbow
Why, oh, why can’t I?”
Mike turns from the window and flops on his back on the bed. He screws his eyes shut, concentrating. There’s darkness, and the memory of El in her final moments. If they were her final moments. If it was a memory. He reaches over to the lamp by the bed and flicks it off. The room is left with the faint glow of the moon and the streetlights through the window. Mike tosses and turns a long time before finally drifting to sleep.
***
Midmorning sunlight is streaming into Mike’s room, and he’s still lying on top of the covers in his clothes, asleep now. He drifts through a hazy dream in which he and El are in that void between minds, both looking for and failing to find each other. Whenever he gets close, she slips away.
A hand closes around Mike’s, and his eyes burst open. He’s still lying on his bed, but around him is not his room, but instead a vast darkness. There’s water on the ground. His eyes trace up from the hand holding his to the arm to the girl. El.
***
Max is making a bowl of cereal in her kitchen. She’s in sweats, her hair pulled back in a low ponytail. She goes to the fridge to put away the milk, opens the door, looks in. The milk is still in her hand, hanging limp by her side as she stares in shock at whatever’s in the fridge. “Ho-ly shit.”
***
Robin hits a pothole too hard with Steve’s car, and everyone inside bounces. Nancy makes eye contact with Jonathan through the review mirror. She’s clutching the handle above her door, and he’s holding on to the back of her seat with one hand and cradling his camera case with the other.
“Sorry!” says Robin.
“It’s fine,” says Nancy through clenched teeth. She looks out the window towards the old lab. It sits looking forlorn and abandoned. But then there’s a flash of red in an upper story window, for just a second. A tiny little dot of light. “Pull over,” says Nancy.
“What?” says Robin. She looks over at Nancy, and the car swerves dangerously. Jonathan almost loses his grip on his camera.
“Pull over!” Nancy’s more insistent this time.
With a screech, Robin turns off onto the gravel next to the road and brakes hard. The occupants are jostled again and Jonathan swears under his breath.
“I’m sorry my driving’s so bad,” Robin says. “I promise I’ve never crashed and I’m not going to crash, but if one of you wants to drive the rest of the way, that’s fine, and I won’t be offended. Okay, maybe a little offended, but I promise I won’t hold it against—”
“Robin,” Nancy cuts her off. “It’s not your driving. I saw something.”
***
El stands next to Mike’s bed in the void. She’s bedraggled, and she wears her old wetsuit, now dirty and torn in places. Her hair’s gotten longer, but it’s tied back. “Mike,” she says. She looks delighted.
He sits bolt upright, still clinging to her hand. His surprise and excitement are written across his face, but he’s uncertain too. “El?”
***
El floats on her back in the makeshift tank in Hopper’s cabin. Around the tank, the place has the look of a doomsday prepper’s bunker: camping supplies, nonperishable foods, and weapons stacked up in the kitchen. The windows have all been boarded up again, and there’s a heavy plank of wood barring the door from the inside.
Outside, the sky is gray and red. Most of the trees have fallen, including one just in front of the porch. The few that still stand are spindly and leafless. Everything is sapped of color. Tripwires are set around the perimeter of the cabin, and further out, a demodog snuffles in the sparse underbrush. The vines of the Upside Down stretch out in all directions, crossing over each other.
Beyond the woods, Hawkins is decimated. It looks like an earthquake has hit. Buildings and powerlines have toppled and large rock formations have risen up in the middle of streets. A demogorgon claws its way through the wreckage.
There’s no one human moving around. Instead, at random intervals, people lie on the ground and against the rubble, covered by the vines, still. In the center of town, there’s a larger cluster: soldiers and civilians alike, all of them held just the same. Among them, Michael Wheeler is held by vines against the side of a toppled truck. Behind his closed eyelids, his eyes twitch back and forth, as if dreaming.