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Jane liked the snow.
She liked wearing layers upon layers of jumpers and jackets, her hands obscured by leather gloves, and face covered partially by a scarf.
It was like walking around in a tight, warm blanket. Pressure pushing down on her shoulders, an embrace that would never pull away.
Another thing she liked about this place was how light it was. How revealing. The snow reflected the sun just right, the land flat and visible for miles. It was never night here. Never completely dark. The lack of human inference, made it so when it did turn to twilight, a navy sky that never quite reached blackness, every star in the sky was made clear. Galaxies and distant worlds. She could see it all, and in turn, it saw her back.
Nothing really hid in this place. And, more importantly, there was nothing here to hide from.
But there was life. In the trees of the forests she traversed, in the birds that sang from their nest, and in the occasional appearance of a fox. Jane finally felt herself age, feeling the differences with every month that passed, falling further and further away from the little girl who killed a monster, and closer to something...different. Something Jane.
Now there was nothing to hide, nothing to fight…she could finally learn how to grow - grow into the name that her mother gifted her, into the person Jane Hopper would have been.
Jane learned how she liked to style her hair - just down to her shoulders, left to dry in the air so the tips could curl around themselves. She learned what colors she liked best. The purple tinge of the dusk, and the green that revealed itself from the ice as winter melted to spring.
She learned how to be a person. A real, human person, with interests and desires. No longer waiting to take back her life, no longer needing to avenge herself and avenge those whom asked her to.
She had a life now. She had fought for it. She had ‘died’ for it. And now, for the first time, she was allowed to live it the way she saw fit.
She carried a knife in her backpack. After she had disappeared, Jane had quickly found a place that sold supplies. Just the basics. It was one of the last times she saw another person. And she'd taken from them: a small knife, a sleeping bag, some warm clothing to wear, and a flask. She had technically stolen it all. But Jane found it hard to feel bad. She had been stolen from too. Once.
The names of her youth felt distant now, a fading tattoo and a memory of those she left behind. All of whom, she assumed (and hoped), had moved on. There was a subtle kind of sadness in that ending. To think that they would never know the beginning of Jane's story. To live the rest of her life without seeing any of her old friends again.
Eleven's friends.
Every time the thought arose, Jane reminded herself of the same thing. She didn’t want to miss them—Jane Hopper refused to miss them. She would smile and think fondly of the people who once loved her, while still knowing that the person they loved was not who she was, or who she was going to be. They belonged to her past now, and whether they would ever return was something she left to fate.
But people would return to her soon enough. And, after months of waiting to be discovered. Jane Hopper made her first friend.
“What are you doing all the way out here?”
She was short, this woman. Her hair was blonde, tied up into a loose ponytail. She was wearing makeup…at least Jane thought she was. A rich red lipstick, and a flush to her cheeks that didn’t seem natural.
Jane paused, she hadn’t spoken to another person for a very long time.
The girl moved closer, “are you just gonna stand there and gawk?”
She shook her head, finding the words, “No.”
Her voice was soft, scratchy, obviously unused.
The blonde lady smiled, obviously amused, “okay, so answer my question. Why are you out here?”
“I live here”, Jane frowned.
The other girl laughed, “nobody lives here.”
“I do.”
The other girl seemed to think for a moment, before reaching out a hand, “I’m Steph.”
She shook it.
“Jane.”
Steph was weird.
She lived out in the nowhere…just like Jane did. Travelling across for no reason in particular, except the desire to do so.
Her backpack had similar supplies to herself. With one glaring difference. For some odd reason, Steph had decided that makeup and a walkman were vital to survival. Alongside a dress that she seldom wore because of the cold. Jane had found herself incredibly confused the first night they spent together. Sat around the campfire, as Stephanie pulled out items that seemed to serve no purpose at all.
But then Steph explained it to her.
“Out here, alone, it kind of feels like I’m nothing. Like—without people around, I don’t really exist.”
Jane nodded. She knew the feeling all too well.
“But the makeup, the nice clothes…all the things I used to wear and do before I came out here—it reminds me of who I am. So I don’t get too lost along the way.”
Jane smiled at that. “And the music?”
Steph set her backpack down, pulled out a small box, and pressed play. “It reminds me of who I want to be.”
♪ ♬ ♪ ♬
Jane had never heard this song before, but had decided, quite quickly, that it was her favorite.
It was the first piece of music she had heard in a long time. And unlike those she had heard before, it had no lyrics. Only the sound of instruments.
Without the need for words, Jane could close her eyes and imagine anything she wanted. And as it played, she did exactly that - shutting her eyes and picturing a fox hunting a rabbit. Something simple: running and chasing; the hare’s fear as it fled, the fox’s quiet satisfaction as it pounced and caught it, then a bloodied mouth carrying the limp body home to feed the family waiting in the hollow.
It wasn’t sad that the hare had died, and it wasn’t happy that the fox had fed its family. It was simply the earth: living, breathing, and maintaining its balance. A world that accepted Jane as something that existed within it.
Eleven had thought that nobody would ever choose her. That she would be doomed to be a sacrifice. She had accepted that, a world where ‘Eleven’ lived, was not one that would bring any peace. Her and her sister had thought so. And although Kali had changed her mind, the feeling still weighed heavy.
But here, in this place. Knowing the feeling of the snow beneath her feet, the warmth of a fire she had made, listening to a wordless song that let her add any meaning she wanted…in that place, which just so happened to be everywhere. Jane realised something.
She had been born. That was the ultimate meaning. And by way of her living at any point, and by way of her not being dead. That was the world telling her…it did choose her. It chose her through the pain and the terror. It chose her, as a pretty blonde girl sat across from a fire they'd made together, humming along to a tune that one day…Jane might be able to follow.
She turned to Steph, feeling calmer than she ever had, “can you keep it on all night?”
Steph nodded, poking the campfire and watching the warm light crackle off into the sky.
“I prefer it on when I’m sleeping too.”
Jane and Steph made a good team.
They hunted together, with Stephanie laying traps along the forest floor, and Jane spearing fish from the river nearby. Steph was better at finding berries and cooking food without burning it, and Jane was better at hunting and boiling water. She had more patience out of the two, with Steph being the kind to loudly complain whenever something didn’t go right for them.
Jane never minded though. She liked the way Steph’s brows furrowed, the way her loud voice became even louder: the wild gesticulations, and the high-pitched groan she would make when she was frustrated.
Her hands were soft and the same size as her own, and her body was slightly shorter and plumper. There was nothing rough or angular about the way Steph was made. But, despite her softness, she was still tough, and Jane could rely on her completely.
Jane never felt the need to talk, with Steph’s voice filling enough conversation for the both of them.
She was deeply grateful for the company. But more than that…she was grateful that out of anyone, it was this girl. Somebody that treated her like an equal. Somebody who didn’t ask her too many questions, completely content in telling her own stories.
“—and then, my dad told me that ‘if I wanted to wear an expensive dress for prom, then I should loose a couple pounds first’, isn’t that fucking crazy! Like, I get that I’m not the thinnest girl in the world. But I’m sexy! If I wasn’t sexy then why did Brad Rayder ask me out? Brad Rayder. He was on the football team!”
Jane nodded along, pretending to care about whatever Steph was babbling about. More focused on the way her eyes shone in the lightness. How the sun reflected light in a way that made her skin so clear. The exposure that neither of them would shy away from. The way her fringe was slightly damp from the humidity.
“—so what about you?”
Jane paused, “me?”
Steph laughed, “any boyfriends? Bad dad stories? Did you ever go to prom?”
Jane stopped walking, frozen. It was the first question Steph had asked her about her past. They had known each other for a few months now, and she had never needed to look back. Never needed to confront the avalanche of what came before ‘Jane’. She didn’t want to speak about Hopper, or never getting a childhood. Or the short six months when she actually attended High School, how she was bullied mercilessly. So she settled on:
“I had a boyfriend.”
“Oo a boyfriend”, Steph said, teasingly, “what happened with that?”
“He thinks I’m dead”, Jane replied. She didn’t want to lie to Steph. Not her.
“Ah. Well that’s not good”, Steph sighed, nothing in her tone denoting pity, “did you like him? Or love him…I guess.”
“Yes and no”, Jane replied, “I don’t think I loved him in a way you would a boyfriend. I liked him though. He was my first friend”, she stopped, thinking back to the way Mike had struggled against the army as she walked away, the way he screamed, “I think we shouldn’t have been more than that.”
“Well, yeah, I’ve been there too”, Steph said, “I think sometimes…you just fall into it. You know? A relationship. Because it’s there and you feel like you need to.”
Jane hummed, “I did not know what a boyfriend really was. I only knew that I cared about him. And if that meant we would kiss now and again, then I guess we’d kiss.”
Steph barked out a laugh, “was he that bad at it?”
Jane shrugged, “I don’t know what good is. I only ever kissed him.”
“Oh”, Steph muttered, before turning around to her, “you haven’t had a good kiss before?”
Jane thought about it. About how kissing was just a thing they did sometimes. Like a chore…a hobby. She saw it the same way you would spearing a fish, or setting up a fire at night. It was just something she did. Jane set a fire to stay warm, Jane killed a fish so she could eat it later, and Eleven kissed Mike so he’d be her boyfriend…
“I don’t know. I don't have anything to compare it to.”
Stephanie hummed and sat down. The snow had melted away now, the grass slightly damp…soon to dry. They had walked a long way over the past few months, and the night had turned to blackness at some point, passing the navy of the twilight. They had moved away from the place where everything froze, where the lands were only flat and barren - now settling in a forest, somewhere they had stayed in and lived off for the past few weeks. There was even more life in this place. The birds are even louder. She had seen a deer once, the first in months. Something that told her that spring was melting into summer.
Jane sat down with her, and Steph held out a hand. Just like that first day they’d met, “Kiss me then.”
Jane flushed, and a thought arose that never had before. Sure, she had kissed Mike, and in a time where kissing was a part of Jane’s life, she had never felt embarrassed at the idea of it. But now, as she sat across from this woman she had learned so much about. A girl who had grown into her favorite person. She blushed. She couldn’t help it. The idea of being so close to Steph, touching…it stirred something within her, something she had never felt before and couldn’t quite put a name to.
“You?”, she said, “Why?”
Steph’s face was redder than usual, semi-obscured by the blush she had applied that morning. It all kind of mixed together, reds and pinks. She looked…beautiful. Alive.
“The better question is, why not?”
So Jane took Steph’s hand, and chose something for herself.