Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

November 1987

Dustin is acting strange.

It’s not necessarily something she’d have picked up on if she hadn’t been specifically observing the room to see if any of them were watching her- watching, the way you’d watch a ticking time bomb. Like the one Murray was supposedly rigging up right now, the one that was holding them back from leaving this place, because of some last minute issue. 

This is another one of those times where she thinks about one of the first words Hopper had explained to her, way back in their cramped, cozy little cabin- simpler times. Easier times.

“Fate,” he’d said. “That can be your word of the day, huh?”

“Fate?”

“Yeah, like- fate worse than death. You ever heard that?”

“No.”

“No? Okay, well- fate is like- it’s something outside of our control. Something… pre-determined. If something is down to fate- it’s kind of like a situation revolving around chance. Or… luck.”

She’d been quiet at that. Absorbing it- trying to remember if she’d heard the word before that, and just brushed it off. 

Fate.

“Outside of our control?”

“Yeah,” he’d said gruffly. “If something’s left up to fate- it means it could go any way.”

He’d hefted the thick coil of trip wire after that, pulled it taut around the tree they’d been wrapping.

“But I’m not leaving this up to fate,” he’d continued, his eyes hard. “We’re not taking chances here, are we? Because we have the rules.”

“The rules,” she’d murmured, staring at the wire.

“Yeah. Tell me again- from the top.”

El is pretty sure whatever happens in the next hour is going to be entirely left up to chance. She’s just glad Hopper appears distracted, following Murray around and bickering.

They'd left them there in the foyer of the lab, huddled together while they wait.

Well. There’s one thing she isn’t going to leave up to fate- not if there’s even a miniscule chance it might come in handy one day. 

Which brings her back to the key point at hand- the observation. Scanning the room- reading the room, Will used to say, when they’d been two weeks in at Lenora Hills High and she’d said something awkward and out of place to a boy they’d been trying to befriend. It wasn’t her fault, he’d told her, after the boy had left. She just needed to learn how to read the room. Like a book.

She’s reading Dustin now.

Her eyes catch on him as she sweeps across the room; the children, huddled together, dirty and exhausted; Robin and Nancy, talking together in hushed tones. Dustin, turned towards Steve- who’s bent over a little, wincing as he moves. Maybe Dustin’s just concerned about him. Maybe that’s why they both look distressed. Frustrated.

After a minute, Steve shakes his head in resignation, and moves off the wall. 

Steve is… strange. Ever since she’d returned from California, there’s been something sort of off about him, in a way she can’t put her finger on. She watches as they move stealthily towards the back hallway, slipping past the door.

And she follows.

She’d not deliberately following Dustin. But he’s inadvertently giving her a sort of diversion if anybody (Hopper) comes their way, so it’s good timing. She gets to a crossroad in the hall where the paths diverge, and tries to think about the best way to get up there. To the room Kali had told her before all of this, before she’d lain splayed out on the floor, blood and final breaths rattling out of her mouth, her dark eyes huge, wide. Pleading.

El exhales, slow and deep. Closes her eyes.

When she opens them again, she feels Dustin’s gaze upon her. Whatever he and Steve are doing… they aren’t just going to the bathroom. Steve is busy tugging at a jammed exit door, cursing as he tries to let them out. 

Dustin stares at her.

Mouths: okay?

She nods. 

Promise?

Another nod.

There isn’t any point in asking what he’s doing. She doesn’t have time. She moves on instead, quickly- there’s an uncomfortable familiarity to this place now, and she tries not to let the memories seep in through the cracks as she flits up the stairwell, gritting her teeth in determination. She knows where the labs are. Where the files she needs are kept.

It takes her less than ten minutes.

She dips her head to the side as she destroys the lock on the ancient, dusty filing cabinet. It’s the kind of thing she’d have expected the military to keep a better eye on- duplicated files, moulding away in the upside down. But as Kali had pointed out- why should they? They never expected anybody to come through here. Anyone to care.

El fingers through the dusty, yellowing pages, curling with age and damp. 

It’s shocking to see how old the dates are. How long those women had been… prepared. Abused.

There’s five files there. Who knows how many countless women had been put through what her mama once endured, but she knows these five are the ones that had eventually been impregnated, destined to remain shackled to bedframes in a military laboratory, away from family, friends, any kind of gentle touch. It makes her stomach turn. Fate was not kind to these women. 

She doesn’t bother reading them in any great detail- just grabs them, and jams them down the only place she can think, down the back of her spandex suit, sticking against her skin like body armor. Probably it looks very odd, she thinks as she makes her way back downstairs. This would be a good time to be a real superhero- one with a cape, like Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman wouldn’t have any issue concealing highly secretive government documents down the back of her slightly sweaty superhero suit. 

Mike is in the hall when she gets back, glancing around frantically- she sees tension bleed from his shoulders as she approaches, and he rakes a hand through his hair, tugging off his hat.

“Where’d you go?”

“Bathroom,” she tells him innocently. She smiles, and makes sure her back faces the wall as she gets in. Mike doesn’t realise, but she’s sort of been avoiding looking at him the entire time they’ve been down here together. The same way she’d avoided Hopper’s eyes earlier, and Will’s. Joyce’s, even. 

It’s too much. 

Too painful. 

There’s too much love, and empty promises there. 

None of them realise that in less than an hour, fate is going to decide whether El keeps breathing. Nobody does, and there’s sort of a beauty in that- in how unknown everything is. It makes it easier not to spiral over it, like she’d been doing with Kali. Over and over, circling the drain.

Steve and Dustin are Late. They arrive back looking harassed, and Steve looks incredibly pale. Incredibly sickly- she feels an odd sort of… something. There’s something there, in the way he pauses and looks at her. A knowing. 

She turns away. They all get into the truck, and she breathes out, shallow. Forces herself to smile.

Mike holds her hand in the truck, which is nice. She’s not sure he’ll ever actually realise how deeply she loves him, even after they’d broken things off romantic style over three months ago, when he’d broken down again over the stress of it all and the prospect of losing her. She hadn’t realised how much better it would feel between them after- freeing. There’s still a tie between them, but there’s no more heavy weight there. She hopes, regardless of what fate decides for them both, that he ends up somewhere with his three pretty waterfalls. 

As they near the border, she begins to focus. There’s a decision here- one to be made based on whether or not they’ll be alone when they careen outside the gate. If they are- if they make it through and she can get by undetected, and Hopper’s plan to get her out and fake that she’d died in there goes well-

Well. Fate will keep her wheels spinning.

But if they aren’t alone?

She thinks about Kali’s face, screwed up in anguish. We have to end it, she’d said, we have to break the cycle.

Ten seconds before the truck breaches the gate, several things happen in succession.

The first is a resignation. She senses their big machine- the one that dulls her powers, fills her body with a crooked agony in a way she’ll never be able to comprehend.

The next is a practiced move that she’d decided on at the start of this venture if things did go this way- in combination with a little help from Luck, or Chance, or maybe even Fate itself- the truck judders over a lump in the earth, a crack in the tarmac- everyone bounces, rolling about the back- and she makes her move, so quick that she’s pretty sure nobody even notices- she slides to the back and side of the truck, and lets her body roll, lithe and controlled, using her powers to prevent herself from skidding over the road as she rolls to the side, and makes a run for the gate, concealed by the edge of it from the awaiting military. 

She has no idea if any of them saw her- even if they did, they have no time to react- the truck swerves as the tires pop and suddenly there’s a mass of screaming and wailing and a flurry of movement. She watches Mike and Will get wrenched out first, then the kids- Nancy and Jonathan screaming in protest as little Holly Wheeler is picked up, kicking and yelling, by a burly man in uniform. 

She thinks about the files, stuck with sweat to her skin. 

There’s no use for them now. She’d only have been able to do something with them if the plan had gone the other way- but fate has made her decision, and as the bomb detonates, and she feels a great tug in her gut- she walks out to the centre. 

The eye of the storm.

She isn’t able to look at any of them directly.

Mike moves first- she hears him yell, strangled, screaming her name repeatedly, and every single one feels like a knife wound. 

The pain is abominable- it’s worse than the time she’d had to rip part of the mind-flayers diseased flesh creature right out from under her own skin on the floor of the Starcourt mall. Worse than anything Papa ever put her through. Worse than Henry’s unnatural force pinning her to walls, trees, vines, attempting to crack her bones, send her back to their maker.

She watches Will struggle and scream. Dustin actually wrenches himself free of the soldier holding him- but she’s impassive. 

She is a soldier. A weapon.

She is ending the cycle.

She closes her eyes, and lets fate take her.

Only-

It-

Doesn’t-

Everything suddenly becomes very fast, and very chaotic, all at once. She’s so shocked by the motion of the giant billboard ripping towards her as half of the rightside up seems to be sucked inwards in her direction that she moves on instinct alone- ducking to avoid it as more debris comes her way. She sees, as she cowers to one side- a group of military uniform-clad people shrieking, falling like bowling pins as they’re knocked to the ground. There’s half a tree being hurled around and around- it’s like a little cyclone, like the ones she’d seen on TV, the hurricanes that tear up houses, cars, farms.

Fate, it seems, isn’t done with her. And El isn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth- she ducks, and hurtles off to one side. Nobody is looking- anybody facing this way, anybody close- is getting sucked asunder, or flattened in the square. All of her companions are behind the truck now, sheltering- she prays that they’ll be okay as she reaches the entrance to the tunnel, prays nobody’ll be in there- and she uses her power to slide off the cover, sliding in, home base. She takes off running at full pelt, and she doesn’t stop until her sides ache, and she’s ready to puke.

Her entire body is alight with adrenaline. 

She didn’t- she didn’t actually think she’d get this far. She’s shaking frantically as she slows for a second, doubled over with a stitch. The tunnels are deserted- even if the military had known about them, it’s clear they’d gathered all available personnel out at the gate entrance, awaiting their arrival. She wonders how they’d known they’d be there.

As she reaches the end of the tunnel leading towards their home base (the cabin), she notices an abandoned army duffel bag. It’s a mess- items strewn along the ground, blood on one side. It can’t be a good sign, but she takes it anyway- there’s a plan forming in her head now, and this might come in useful.

El is a survivor. The one thing she’s learned over the years– entirely self-taught, something she’d developed outside of the influence of Papa, or Hopper, or Mike, or anyone- is how to get by on her own. 

Killing things. Living in the harsh outdoors- fate has given her this tiny slip. An exit strategy. Life.

Best of all- nobody saw. 

This wasn’t a scenario she’d foreseen. She’d never anticipated being able to slip away from the military and the people she loves- the people she’d be eternally endangering if they knew she was alive. 

So when she gets into the cabin, she moves swiftly, but cautiously.

She destroys everything.

There’s something her El needs. 

A year ago, early on- Hopper and Joyce had made up go-bags. Emergency supply kits to take if she’d needed to run and there’d been no one to help her. 

El needs to run. But she also needs to make sure nobody realises she is the one who took the go-bag. So she figures a military raid should cover the evidence- she lets the power well up from deep inside, flicking her arms around as though orchestrating a great performance- she whirls around, half manic, half panicked- a little gleeful, even, at the prospect of living. The place is a mess- furniture overturned, drawers emptied- she does feel a little bad at how much of a wreck she’s leaving it all in. Eventually she gets to the go-bags- she tears one apart, same with the other- but she takes the third, carefully packing it up, covering its absence with piles of mess. She straps it firmly to her back, and then changes, quick- clothes nobody should recognise her in. The dresser they have there has exploded outwards in her frenzied mess-making- she ends up in her own jeans, a t-shirt from Hop, a sweater from Joyce, a coat she thinks Will might have left here. Warm, duffle, with little rope fastenings. The rest of her disguise she’ll have to take care of later- there’s supplies for that in the go bag. 

As a finishing touch, she leaves the items from the military bag gently scattered around, obvious clues. The bloody bag itself is left at the centre of the crimescene- see, look who broke in. Look who raided the cabin.

When she leaves, she doesn’t look back.

It’s very dark as she picks her way across the open field behind them, and then into the woods. El isn’t sure she’s ever been afraid of something like that- Will once confessed to her that it made him uneasy. He hates dark, cold places- which is understandable. El isn’t bothered by the rustling, the eyes in the dark. There is nothing here that has a capacity to hurt her in a way she couldn’t fend off. 

Nothing in the woods that would want to hurt her anyway. Not the way people do.

She does use the big bulky headtorch from the go-bag as she makes her way to the border- the cabin is conveniently located on the outskirts. She waits at the treeline, eyeing the barricade. The armoured tower.

One soldier. A lone wolf, watching his territory- gazing out. He’s turned away from her- she clicks the torch off, and ducks low as she runs through the long grass, reaching the edge quickly. She’s lucky this is the quiet side, in the direction of Indianapolis. They’d been over this escape route a few times prior. 

She climbs nimbly, and wonders if the soldier has twigged yet that she’s coming- when she gets to the top, she stops, shocked.

The man guarding the tower is fast asleep.

He’s snoring on the job- slumped to one side, drooling a little. He’s young. Can’t be much older than Steve.

She should kill him. 

If he wakes and sees her as she walks away from the other side of the barricade, he could raise the alarm. Jeopardise everything. She thinks of the files in her bag- those five women. 

Women who died in that awful, devastating way.

But El has killed enough tonight.

Quiet as she can, she makes her way to the edge. 

She jumps.

When she lands, she’s winded- even with her powers, it was a huge fall. She looks up- but there’s no alarm. No yelling- no shooting. The man is probably still fast asleep.

So for the last time, she leaves Hawkins. She doesn’t look back again as she starts to walk- she only looks up. And the moon is full.

The area surrounding Hawkins has always been a lonely place, which works entirely in her favour- but especially since the military occupation began, she knows from Murray’s reports that the roads are almost entirely dead. The army must have closed off a specific road in, or out- either way, she knows she’s probably safe to walk out in the open for most of the beginning of her journey.

She also knows there’s an abandoned gas station in about two miles. She checks the compass from her go-bag- she’s only been out on this road once, when she’d hitchhiked her way with that nice trucker man to see mama. 

Mama.

How she’d love to make her way there now. To see her face again- see how it might have changed over the years. To feel that special connection they’d had so long ago when she’d first visited them and mama had reached out in her mind, showing her things. Terrible things.

But that’d be stupid. 

And I’m not stupid.

It’s safer to stick to a route out of here.

She wonders where Hopper is now, and her heart squeezes in her chest at the thought. It’s a dangerous one- the kind of thought that makes her want to flee back behind those massive concrete walls and beg for forgiveness- to see him one last time. To see all of them- but that would just put them all in further danger.

So she keeps walking. By the time she reaches the gas station, the moon is still high in the cloudless night sky, and there’s a sheen of sweat across her brow. The coat is firmly stuffed in her bag now, and she breaks open the lock on the abandoned bathroom door out back behind the fuel pumps effortlessly. 

Good. A mirror.

She doesn’t want to linger here, despite how silent and empty it all is- there’s no power of course, but she has the torch, and the door left ajar allows enough moonlight to spill into the room so that she can see what she’s doing as she pulls out her supplies, grits her teeth, and for what might be the tenth time in her life, cuts off her hair.

Not buzzed- she cuts it just below her ears. Then she mixes up that foul smelling paste once had shown her before, smearing it overtop- her eyes sting. She finds glasses, and a hat- and most important of all…

A drivers license.

Hopper had gone over the importance of having this as some form of identification- a fake one, of course- if she really did have to flee, and flee far. He’d had Murray make a couple of them up, but the one she’d kept in the go bag had a picture of her they’d taken in a blonde wig, so. 

Time to go blonde.

El wasn’t sure if it would work, if push came to shove. She’d never had to use one before. She’d never learned to drive until last summer, when Joyce had taught her in her old Ford Pinto. Hopper had told her she’d need this kind of thing for travel, too. She’d never left the country- that was always outside the realm of possibility for her up until now.

It hits her then, as she walks back outside to the empty expanse of road edged in forestry, the moon shining bright above her.

It really is a possibility now.

She’s never felt this… free before.

And never this entirely alone.

Nobody else knows I’m alive. 

Nobody.

She wipes the tears away from her eyes as they bead up again. Probably it’s just a reaction from this foul smelling paste.

She washes it off after checking her watch, her scalp tingling. Her hair feels kind of lank, and tangled- she tries to smooth it out, grateful it’s short. When it’s done, she checks the picture on the license again- small and grainy. The name beside it reads Joanna Ivy. Joanna is eighteen. She’s from Illinois, from an address called Pine Hill Grove. She has bad eyesight. El has a pair of glasses in the bag too, so she puts them on. When she looks in the mirror again, she expects it to feel like looking at a stranger. 

But it doesn’t.

It’s still just her own face, despite everything. Pallid and tired looking, with straggly wet hair, very pale now. Blonde. Just like that wig she’d once borrowed from Nancy- except much less nice.

She stops to pee, then leaves everything as it was, eating a granola bar as she walks, checking the time- won’t be light for a while yet. It’s freezing out, especially with her wet hair dripping down her back. The coat goes back on. 

She consults the compass. The map. She’s pretty sure she’ll be hitting civilization soon, so she strays off the road and into the treeline, skirting the edge. Exhaustion ebbs through her by the time she hits the blockade- unguarded, just stopping any access for cars to the road in towards Hawkins. She goes left at the fork, double checking the map- and ten minutes later she sees it in the distance, bright red.

A car drives past. First one she’s seen, and she stops to observe it. It’ll be light in a few hours- she’s still on target. 

When she reaches the glowing red sign for the in-use gas station, she darts to the side of the building, lurking in the shadows beside the bathroom. She fishes out a baggy with a wad of cash, flipping through the bills- good to only take part out now.

Then she waits.

The first truck trundles in off the highway around twenty minutes later. She watches the guy fill up, go in to pay- when he exits, she slinks out from the shadows. 

“Hi,” she says quietly, but he still startles.

“Jesus Mary’n Joseph,” he exhales, shaking his head. “Where’d you come from, girl?”

“Sorry,” she smiles, aiming for friendly. Non-threatening. “I was just… I was wondering what direction you’re driving in?”

He blinks at her.

“You’re lookin’ for a ride?”

He checks his own watch in disbelief. Glances round, as though to check- yes, the place is deserted. Yes, there is no possible way El could have appeared here if not for-

“I got a lift to- I got a lift here,” she cuts in. “I’m looking for a ride towards Indianapolis.” The name of the city still comes out clunky. It sits unfamiliar on her tongue. She pulls out a few bills.

“I can pay?”

He frowns at her. 

“‘Fraid I’m headed the other direction. But…” he trails off, looking her over again. “You’re awful young to be out here thumbin’ rides. It’s not safe. ‘Specially not this kinda time.”

El grimaces, trying to school her expression into something that doesn’t reflect irritation. Maybe for literally anybody else, it would be. 

She could kill this man with such little effort it doesn’t bare thinking about.

“I understand,” she says solemnly. “Have a nice day.”

She wanders towards the entrance to the gas station, hoping he’ll take the hint and move on quickly. In her periphery she sees him hesitate a moment- but his own priorities win out. On the job, probably. 

He leaves.

She tries thrice more before daylight hits. Hits gold on try four- an older guy, grizzled and suspicious looking, but willing enough to take cash off her in exchange for a seat in the front of his beaten looking chevy as he drives out towards the city. He has the radio playing when she climbs in, and he doesn’t make any effort to make small talk. 

Perfect. 

Despite the initial buzz of adrenaline in her veins, El crashes hard when the silence grows too comfortable. The events that had transpired over the past twenty four hours hit her like a tonne of bricks, and before she knows it, the old man is shaking her shoulder roughly to wake her up from where she’d been drooling against his window. 

“C’mon,” he says gruffly. “Even took ya straight to the Greyhound station. That’s where you said you needed to go?”

She nods, stiffly, rubbing sleep from her eyes.

Everything feels awful.

She thanks him, and clambers from the truck.

Ugh.

Her mouth is bone dry, tasting of dead things. Her limbs suddenly feel tense and achey- the brief half hour of sleep she must have gotten seems to have made everything worse, not better- her body is screaming in protest after being ripped from slumber, her mind all foggy and fuzzy. Still, she manages to find the ticket booth, nervously pushing the glasses frames higher up on her nose. She catches her reflection in a puddle on the ground. Fraying, chin length blonde hair. Purple bags under her eyes. 

She sighs, and buys a ticket for the first bus leaving town, gripping the map in her bag like a lifeline. 

Cincinnati. 

She can work with that.

February 1988

Joanna Ivy wakes up at eight on the dot.

She’s a punctual person.

Eleven Hopper didn’t used to be, but Joanna is a very different person from Eleven. She’s never grumpy about waking up this early. She’s totally fine with doing things like case worker meetings and morning chores.

She also lives in a woman’s shelter. 

For now- it’s a temporary thing, her assigned case worker (Maria) explains. They’ll help her get the resources to get back on her feet. Get moving again.

After she’d ended up in Cincinatti, El hadn’t stuck around for very long. Something about the city had made her uneasy, and she’d boarded another coach headed towards New York after a month or so, thinking about all of the movies she’d seen set there- the vastness of it all, the busyness. Possibly that would be a better pace to lose herself in. 

But New York city hadn’t fit the plans she’d set herself. 

Joyce had always told her- there were places for girls to go when they were in trouble. Places to help women. She’d stayed in one for a little bit- there was no shame in it, she’d said. They want to help. If you’re ever really stuck- really on your own…

But after she’d been turned away from the fifth shelter she’d tried, after looking up addresses in the first library she’d come across when she’d got off the coach, only her go-bag to her name, and a fast-depleting amount of cash (everywhere in New York was too full, too busy) she’d barely lasted two weeks there. 

Too expensive. No easily accessible seedy motels.

Too many people.

Too much noise.

Maine had been an accident. 

She’d actually meant to buy a ticket for Maryand. Baltimore, to be specific. It had been cheaper. But two hours in, the clipped conversation from the woman in the seat in front of her had clued her in that this, in fact, was not the coach for Baltimore. It was headed to Portland, Maine. 

So Portland it was.

El was drifting.

Everything had still felt sort of dreamlike at that point- it couldn’t be real. She couldn’t really be on a coach from New York City, headed to god knows where, with barely three hundred dollars left to her name, and not a single soul in the world aware of her existence. 

It made her feel very sleepy all the time. 

All she ever wanted to do was curl up and block it all out. Sleepy was good. Sleepy was better than the sadness- the slow, syrupy kind of sadness that filters through your system, coating your insides until it gets harder and harder to breathe. To be.

She doesn’t let herself think about that anymore. Or about home. About Hopper. Mike, or Will, or Joyce, or any of her friends. 

She thinks about Joanna.

What does Joanna like to do? Probably… she’d be able to play an instrument. El never got the chance to learn. Joanna plays piano, she decides. Joanna likes being outside. Joanna was popular at school- she had lots of friends. She was good at math and English. She’d never struggled to read a book. Joanna doesn’t have any family, and that’s fine- that makes things easier. 

It makes the lies come out smoother when she ends up on the doorstep of a shelter near Portland’s centre. Something in the way she carries herself- and her face, maybe- makes the woman who takes her in look upon her very kindly. She’s gentle to her when she asks her questions, making her a hot cup of tea. 

The funny thing is, it doesn’t feel like a lie at all.

She’d rehearsed this part very briefly with Joyce, because it isn’t as though she can ask for shelter from the US military because they view her as privately owned property. 

Instead, she’s running away from a bad man. Her father was very unkind. He beat her terribly- her mother died a long time ago. She doesn’t have any relatives, no-one to turn to. The bad man tried to hurt her, over and over again. He told her he would never, ever stop trying to hurt her. 

As long as she lived, he’d keep trying to hurt her.

So Joanna left. Joanna has nowhere to go. 

And an hour later, she’s filling out paperwork. She has a room- in a big shared house, an old one. There’s a baby crying upstairs, and the woman next door to her slams the door as she approaches her room, arguing in rapid Spanish with a younger girl- her daughter, perhaps. 

When she closes the door, muffling all of the noise behind her- she waits to feel something. Relief. Happiness. Even the sticky, inescapable sad feelings.

Nothing. 

All she feels is exhaustion again.

She dumps the go-bag, and strips out of the ragged clothes she’s in- she has three sets now from a goodwill she’d stopped by in New York, and a bunch of socks and underwear, but they never really feel clean, even after she takes them to a laundromat. She makes sure the door is locked, and then climbs into the narrow little bed, and passes out. 

Eight hours later, she wakes up. It’s dusk- the sky is purplish red. She suddenly feels the need to be outside, desperately- the walls feel too tight. Too constricting. She dresses again, and locks her room behind her before she leaves the house, not really knowing where she’s headed, just needing to walk, to move. She doesn’t even register how long it’s been until she’s forced to stop at the end of a road, and takes a left, following a sign labelled Back Cove. The air here smells funny. The wind is cold and brisk. 

And suddenly… there it is.

Vast. Endless. Dark under the dimming evening light- almost black, light glimmering as it bounces off the softly glimmering waves lapping at the shore.

“The ocean…” she breathes. 

El’s seen the sea before. Joyce took them to the beach a few times in California- brief daytrips under blazing hot sun, where they’d driven for hours, and gone home sunburnt every time. El hadn’t really enjoyed going in- maybe she’d spent too much time already in saltwater with her eyes blindfolded, her mind flayed open. But she’d liked watching the waves, crashing against Will and Jonathan as they’d frolicked about at the beach. She’d liked the sounds, and the smells, and the ice cream Joyce had bought them.

It’s this little reminder- tugging at her memory as she watches the sea, that finally breaks the dam, and suddenly she’s sobbing uncontrollably, replaying it all over and over- the memory of Will’s face when he’d fallen over as he’d jumped to avoid a wave, coughing up saltwater. The memory of Joyce rubbing suncream over her shoulders. 

It hurts. It hurts so so bad. 

She stays beside the sea until it gets really dark. Until her watch tells her curfew is soon approaching. Her eyes are so puffy when she returns, but nobody says anything as she retreats to her room. 

She hardens herself before sleep. She pulls out her most precious cargo, buried deep at the bottom of her bag.

The files.

The women.

She reads them, over and over, the way she’d seen their elderly neighbour reading his bible, over and over again. Inducing prayer. Seeking revelation. Reminding herself why she’s here. The cost of everything. It feels like a rebellion, being here. 

Living. 

She thinks of Kali’s face as she bled out on the floor of the lab, and suddenly she can’t bring herself to cry about the Byers anymore. It suddenly feels like a silly dream- a childish fantasy in another life. 

Joanna Ivy wouldn’t cry at the beach. 

So she takes herself to bed.

And the next day, she wakes up at eight sharp.

Joanna works at a soup kitchen. 

It’s volunteer work- it’s important, though, for a girl her age to get some experience, Maria says. She works at the soup kitchen thrice per week, and she works as a cleaner on Saturdays and Tuesdays- she’d gotten the work from a network that one of the other girls at the house had told her about. There are a lot of rich people in Portland, with big houses and never enough people to clean them. So Joanna learns how to clean.

The work is easy when she’s alone. She can use her powers for some of it if she gets tired of bending down, scrubbing things, mopping. She’s good enough now that she can do it and barely keep an eye on the mop or the brush or whatever- she can read while she works. Reading is important. Reading is the first step towards the thing Maria really wants her to get- her GED. 

Joanna was already working towards that back in Lenora. The work is as difficult now as it was back then- made harder by the fact she comes home smelling of bleach or of vegetable stock. Harder still by the fact she struggles to focus. Maria says she’s on the list to speak to a counselor. She might even get one next week.

Joanna isn’t sure she’ll be of much help.

Still- the routine is really good. It’s helpful, because it tires her out- and if your brain is very tired, it’s hard to find time to think about the before. About Eleven Hopper’s life, and the people in it, the people who must think she is dead, the people she very badly needs to check on-

But no.

Joanna wouldn’t do that. All Joanna has energy for is wake, shower, work/volunteer/chores/studying, eat, and then sleep again.

Sundays are difficult. 

The lady next door (Sofia) seemed to pick up on this after two weeks. Two weeks where Joanna spent Sundays cooped up in her room, trying to read until the words blurred, curling up on her bed with her eyes leaking until the tears ran out. Eventually Sofia had knocked on her door and demanded, in a flat voice, that she was to accompany her and her daughter Isabella to church. 

Joanna hadn’t ever set foot in a church before. 

Isabella had wrinkled her little button nose at her as she’d emerged in her least-crinkly shirt, and made the twenty minute walk to the little catholic church they’d frequented. She’d been worried about not fitting in- about not understanding the meaning behind all the prayers, or the songs they sang, or-

It hadn’t mattered. The service was in Spanish, and Joanna (nor Eleven) doesn’t speak a word of it.

Sofia didn’t seem to care when she’d eventually stuttered that out after service had ended. She’d just sniffed, and told her well, now you’re going to learn, niña. 

So now Joanna is also learning Spanish. She even took out a book in the library for it. And Sundays are a little less empty. 

The counselor she sees next week is an elderly woman with a stern face and tortoiseshell-framed glasses. Joanna pushes at her own wire-rimmed frames as she sits in front of her, scrunching her skirt under her palms, gripping them tight, ready to lie again.

The thing is- she sort of doesn’t have to. 

The counselor must already know the backstory she’d fed the shelter when she’d arrived, because she isn’t very pushy. She asks very vague questions. She’s a lot more interested in how Joanna’s life is progressing now. When the subject of the bad man comes up, she feels herself curl in on her own body, trying to shrink. It’s awful, feeling this way- so powerless and lackluster. So alone. Even using her powers these days feels tainted a little, because it’s that very ability she possesses causing her to live a new life in hiding. Causing all the sad.

Her counselor, Jenny, is actually a very kind lady, despite her stern-looking face. She doesn’t say things like it isn’t your fault, or you didn’t do anything wrong.

Instead, she asks what Joanna likes to do in her spare time. Outside work. To take her mind off things as she re-integrates.

She pauses at this question, hesitating. Does she answer as Joanna? Or Eleven? Joanna’s hobbies aren’t ones she’d ever been able to try before, which is probably why she daydreamed them up in the first place. Eleven’s own hobbies feel like something from a distant dream, untainted and untouched- too far away for her to be able to pick up again as actual skills.

So she blurts out a mixture of both.

“I used to play the piano,” she says, too fast and too breathless, “and I like to make things. I can make dioramas. And jewelry."

“Wow,” Jenny smiles, leaning forward on her desk. “What kind of jewelry?”

“Um.”

El pauses. She used to make lots of different kinds- Joyce had bought her a bead box and a bracelet making kit for christmas. She’s not sure anything she made was very good though.

“Bracelets,” she says, “and I made some necklaces once.”

Jenny nods. “That’s a valuable skill. I wish I could make necklaces.”

“You can- you- anybody could. It’s easy.”

“That doesn’t mean it’s any less of a valuable skill,” Jenny says, opening her desk drawer. “I myself am partial to knitting.”

She lifts up a misshapen lump of red yarn. Joanna squints at it, wondering at the shape.

“Doesn’t mean I’m any good at it, but I enjoy it just the same.”

“I’ve never knitted before,” El says, thinking of her old yarn box. “But I tried crochet for a little while. I made a hat. And some cushion covers- lots of cushion covers. They weren’t very good though.”

“Did you enjoy making them?”

She thinks about it. About those misshapen covers she’d been too afraid to give to Joyce, sitting abandoned in a box in the cabin.

“Yes,” she decides. “I did.”

Jenny beams. 

“Well. I think that’s maybe something you should try again. Spend your next paycheck on some yarn- in the meantime, I can give you some of this.”

She hands over a tangle of red fiber. It’s scratchy under Joanna’s palms, and it makes something catch in her throat. 

She hates feeling like this. 

She hates when people do this- extend this… sort of kindness. What do you do with it? How do you react?

“Thank you,” she whispers. And then the session ends. 

She sees Jenny for weekly sessions after that. In March, she visits one of the craft stores near East Bayside, and buys crochet hooks in three sizes, a jar of beads, a spool of silver wire. She spends almost an hour there looking at the little tins of paint, the little tubes lined up, bottles of ink flashing like jewels in the early spring sunshine. The paint makes her think about those tiny figures Will used to paint for his dungeons and dragons games. He hadn’t played any of it in California, but he’d painted lots of the little figures. Sometimes she’d borrowed them to place them into her dioramas- into their own little worlds. El wasn’t a painter the way Will was. She was no artist. But she did love to make. 

And would it be so bad if Joanna enjoyed that too?

July 1989

“Jo! C’mere- check this lil’ guy out.”

Joanna looks up, swiping a hand across her brow to try and clear the sweat. It’s hotter’n blue blazes today, as Emmett would say in his drawling accent- the sun beats down upon them mercilessly, and her hands are covered in muck. 

She approaches him as he squats in the dirt, pointing to a little patch of grass, still damp with dew. 

There’s a tiny frog there, unmoving save for his weird little bulging throat. She grins.

“Making friends?”

“Always,” Emmett scoffs, reaching out slowly. 

The frog bounces away through the grass, darting out from his muddy fingers as he curses. Probably back off towards the stream they’d crossed earlier. Emmett scowls, tugging his hat lower over his sunburned cheeks. She glances at his pile of saplings. His very large, unplanted pile.

“You won’t be done by twelve,” she accuses him. “You said you would finish early today. I have already planted half of mine.”

“Yeah well,” he grumbles, “you have some crazy wicked speed about ya. Not convinced you ain’t some tree-plantin’ superhero.”

Joanna stiffens. She shakes her head, slow.

“I just like my job,” she says simply, and turns back to the hole she’d been digging. “And I want to walk the trail later. Hurry up.”

She can hear him muttering under his breath behind her as he picks the trowel up again, and she smiles to herself as she returns to work, feeling a pinch of sadness in her chest at the prospect of leaving this all behind

Emmett doesn’t know that yet. She’s not sure how to tell him that she’s leaving.

Joanna crossed the Canadian border last August. It’s been almost a year now- a year since she got her GED. Over a year since she’d moved out of the shelter, staying in a room in the house that Sofia had started renting with Isabella and Marco, her new boyfriend. She’d decided on the move on a whim, after she’d realised she had enough money to do so- Jenny had mentioned how beautiful Nova Scotia was at this time of year. It had taken longer to get here than a simple coach- but there’d been no issues with her ID (after she’d redyed her hair again). She’d ended up in Fredericton to start with- taking cleaning work, and then a job as a server for a little bit. A job cleaning at a hair salon- only for two months, and then she’d seen the advert for a job in forestry for reparation and research- tree planting, conservation, things like that. No experience required. It was entirely unlike anything she’d ever done before, but she’d called about it anyway. 

The company that she worked for was pretty big. They had been hired under some kind of government program to tackle local deforestation, and as part of a ‘training week’, she’d even got to go visit a big national park in the Laurentides. The mountains had taken the breath straight from her lungs- she’d even swam under a waterfall. 

It was easier, for a time. Being Joanna. She’d been growing into her skin a little more every day, up until things had started to feel wrong again.

She lives in a rented room in a big house with three other people in Truro. It’s a pretty town, and the people she lives with are mostly polite, keeping to themselves. She has a couple of friends- Emmett and Darla, who she works with. Macie, the lady at the diner down the road where she eats every so often. The pay is okay- not much more than what she’d made as a server, but there isn’t much to spend it on out here, so she saves up a little every month. She crochets. She swims. She tries to travel a little- last week she and Darla had gone out to Cape Breton for the weekend. There’d been road signs in a funny language she’d never seen before- neither English nor French. They’d gone swimming, and eaten big bowls of seafood chowder at a restaurant after. Darla had been wearing the bracelet Joanna had made her a week prior.

Things were good.

Except this morning when she’d woken up, she’d had a nosebleed. She’d stained her sleeping bag in the tent she sleeps in out here during planting season. 

And that was the fifth time this month.

And last week her nightmare had been so bad she’d woken up her roommate next door with her screams. She never remembers them- the dreams, that is. She only remembers the feeling. Dread, clawing at her throat.

Worst of all of this is the feeling.

It’s like… intuition. 

When Hopper had first taught her what that meant, El had been able to apply it to various contexts in her life. A self-developed, almost illogical sensation that might guide you out of danger? Yes. That sounded familiar.

She could always feel when there was something developing with the upside down. Never in the same way Will could, of course- she wasn’t quite as dialled in to Henry as all that. But there was always a sort of second sense… as if she knew when something was about to creep back into her life and make a mess again. Now, for the first time in over a year, she’s certain of it.

Something is wrong.

It’s not as though she can exactly look Hopper up and call him. It’s risky even publicly researching Hawkins, or anything to do with that. 

But she’s getting desperate. 

She’s been desperate for a while now- as the physical symptoms worsened, with nosebleeds and headaches and nightmares, and that awful feeling of dread- so she’d done something incredibly stupid. 

Two months ago, she’d done exactly what she promised herself she wouldn’t do. 

She’d gone to the library to research Hawkins.

Pored over newspapers, and when that hadn’t been enough, she’d gone into Fredericton for it, for a bigger library with more resources. Researching, hunkered down, afraid. Finding numbers to call. Calling them. Not Hopper of course- just local businesses there that she remembered him frequenting. Putting on affected accents and asking if anything unusual was happening- hanging up fast when people responded confusedly, or with short tempers.

Stupid. 

Stupid.

Ever since then, she’d been slightly paranoid.

Every man in a suit is watching her. Every car driving past is a threat. She packs and re-packs the go-bag nightly. She tells herself it’s an overreaction- how could they possibly know just from those calls. She’d at least confirmed that Hopper is alive- that had been something. She should never have called in the first place though. 

And then a week ago, she’d seen him.

A man in a black suit, rolling into her tiny town in an unmarked saloon car. She’d spied him when she’d been coming out of the general store, and hastily backed inside again, waiting him out. Thankfully she’d had to go out to a tree-planting zone for the week in the middle of nowhere, camped out somewhere empty and vast. Good excuse to ditch town.

So despite the fact that the man had done nothing suspicious other than illicit a paranoia within her, she’d done the best thing she could think of. 

Paid her last month’s rent, packed up her meager belongings, and decided to leave directly after camping.

So that’s why she really needs Emmett to get his shit together today. This is her last chance to walk the trail with him. Their last day.

Despite her nagging, she ends up having to help him with his pile so that they can be finished for noon. The sun really is atrocious now, and she dips into the stream to cool off a little when they’re done- stripping off her boots and long socks, up to her thighs with her shorts hiked up. The water is cool against her skin, mud and stones between her toes. The earth is so calm out here, away from all the people. They’re out near a forestry bank leading down to a river, and everything is a riot of green, speckled with pink and purple and red wildflowers.

She washes her face and dries her feet off with a rag from her bag, then pulls on her boots so they can walk. 

Emmett is boisterous today.

He’s always energetic- despite his inattentiveness to the work he’s been hired to do, he never runs out of steam on the job, chattering away, barely ever complaining. He’s from Mississippi. Joanna’s never been there, but he complains about the small town he’d grown up in regularly enough that she feels like it’s a place she’d frequently visited in her youth by now. He’s two years older than Joanna, freshly twenty (three years older than El, but who’s counting.) Last month, when they’d camped out at a site near Terra Nova National Park, she’d thought about kissing him. He has freckles over his nose and curly hair. A nice smile. 

It’s the kind of thing that she pushes down. This was always going to be a pit stop. For both of them, probably- Emmett’s only out on the East Coast for a year before his folks drag him back and try to squeeze him into a college course. 

And Joanna Ivy has always had an expiration date. 

She just hadn’t expected it to arrive so soon. 

In the end, she isn’t even able to tell him. They pack up their camping kit, but Emmett’s got family in Rimouski, so he’s heading off early there in the evening since they’re nearby. He thinks she’ll just be making a slow journey back towards Truro. He gives her a lift to the nearest bus station.

Joanna hugs him tight when he goes, and he smiles wide at her- the crinkly-eyed kind of smile she thinks makes him look especially handsome. 

He leaves.

And she waits. 

Two buses later, she’s on the outskirts of Quebec city. Tomorrow she’ll cross the border, back into the states- and she’ll start the long journey she’s put off for so long.

Back.

She isn’t brave enough to go all the way back to Hawkins- that would be stupid. Suicidal. She’d just be putting the others in danger. But there’s a deep rooted sense of worry gnawing at her insides now- and the last time it had felt this bad was when she’d left Kali’s side to return to Hawkins, just in the nick of time to stop a demodog from breaking into Joyce Byers’ old house. The idea of doing nothing feels worse than the bizarre physical symptoms of illness she’d been feeling recent.

It’s probably stress.

It’s maybe lack of sleep.

She hikes her duffel bag higher over her shoulders, a soft ache in her muscles. She’s a lot fitter now than she had been a year ago- and she’s pretty tan as well, from all the outdoor work. Her hair is all curly since she keeps it short, still blonde, but with one streak of dark pink in it from when Darla had bullied her into letting her dye it a few weeks back.

Darla.

Darla is the first proper female friend she’d made in a long, long time. The first one around her age since Max. She’s a local girl, grew up in Truro, and most of her family lives in the area. She’s the one person Joanna will miss real fiercely, more than Emmett. More than anyone. 

Before she’d left, she’d told Darla she had to go. They’d both cried, and then watched six solid hours of Golden Girls reruns. 

Darla knows about the bad men. 

Well- the bad man. The one supposedly chasing Joanna. She knows Joanna hasn’t got parents of her own, not really. Darla’s parents are really nice- her dad is a fisherman, and her mom does something to do with selling houses- her mom’s from the US. Moved here after she married Darla’s dad.

And most crucial of all- her mom has cousins.

And one of them lives in Chicago.

Joanna had been very apprehensive when Darla had told her about her Aunt Carey. She lived with her paternal grandad, who Darla had never met- but she was a friendly lady. Darla hasn’t seen her in almost ten years, but she had scribbled down her number and address on a piece of paper before Joanna had left, and pressed it into her palm.

“I’ll call her,” she whispered, after they’d hugged goodbye in her front yard. “Let her know you might need a place to crash for a lil’ bit, ‘kay? Just if you’re stuck. Swear you’ll call, Jo. Pinky swear.”

And she’d nodded, teary eyed, and pocketed the slip of paper. She’s not sure if she’ll use it- she has a bit of money saved up now. She’s not even sure if Chicago is where she’ll end up- but it was a sweet gesture anyway. 

Scuffling her shoes in the dirt, she tries not to think about Darla anymore. It just hurts like the old hurt she gets when she thinks too much about her old life- Eleven’s old life. 

Maybe she’ll need to switch names again. In a bigger city, she might be able to work out how to do that. Maybe Joanna Ivy really will die a quick death on the Canadian east coast. 

The bus stop she’s at is nice and quiet as the sun sets. There’s one meant to be due in around thirty minutes, and she hasn’t seen a living soul in over an hour since she’d got here to wait. It’s still pretty rural, far out enough from the city that she picks up on the sound of a slow approaching vehicle when it’s still far off. Further than she’d normally pay attention to.

But this vehicle is familiar. 

Fear sluices through her veins as she spies it, standing up from where she’d been leaning against the little shelter by the stop sign, dust over her boots. She grips the straps of her bag tightly, feeling sweat over her palms, slidy over the fabric- she’d bought this bag new a couple months back. It’s bigger than the go bag. Sturdier. 

She forces herself to stay calm. It’s probably a coincidence. Probably it’s just the same type of car- same model, same make, same colour. Different driver. 

It has to be. How on earth would they have followed her here? 

They shouldn’t even know she’s still breathing.

She slinks into the shadows behind the shelter. Wonders if they’d seen her from far away- a lone figure, dithering, vanishing into the shrubbery behind the stop.

The car rolls to a stop. There is just no denying it now.

It is them.

She forces herself to swallow back the bile threatening to rise in her throat. These men pose no real threat to her- in fact, it’s not even men- it’s a singular man. He’s skinny, and twitchy looking. He has some kind of radio, or a walkie- he’s hissing into it furiously as he climbs from the car, the lead still entangled from a source inside at the dashboard.

“You listen to me,” he’s snapping, “I don’t give a damn what Reynolds told you. I don’t give a damn if you’ll take my badge for this- no! No, I seriously- I saw her! My source is good! Let me- I need to talk to you later. I’ll radio in- later, Mitchell. Over.”

He pauses, staring at the bus shelter.

Slowly, his hand migrates to the holster over his left hip.

Closing over the gun.

“Hello?” he calls, cautious.

“I know you’re there. I know someone was here. Saw you down the road.”

He stalks forward, his jaw set. His eyes dart from side to side as he raises the gun. She sees his chest heave as he breathes.

“Come on out,” he hisses. “I won’t hurt you. I- I know you. I can protect you, Jane.”

She stiffens. 

She hears a click, and his thumb moves over the trigger.

“I know you’re there. I know you haven’t been using your powers- let me help you. I can tell you if your friends back in Hawkins are alive. I know you’ve been looking.”

She considers it. She grips her rucksack tighter. The rucksack with her precious cargo- the files.

The women.

This man is not her friend.

This man works for bad, bad people. 

She steps out.

His eyes widen.

“It’s you,” he breathes, and his hands shake. He licks at his lips, shivering. He doesn’t look well.

“They told me I was losing it,” he breathes, swaying a little. “Told me I was- don’t move.”

She pauses. She hadn’t.

He really doesn’t look well. His eyes are wide, but the bags underneath look like those of a person who’s gone without rest for a very long time. He looks manic.

“Get in the car. Now.”

She shakes her head.

He points the gun at the ground towards her leg, and then everything happens at once.

He fires the gun, clearly aimed at her feet- the bullet misses by a hair breadth fraction, and as she darts to avoid it as it ricochets, her hands fly out, instinctive- 

And his neck snaps.

Quick and easy.

He slumps, entirely dead. His eyes lie open- sightless and blue. She groans, falling to her knees. 

What a mess.

She stares around, terrified that more of these black, unmarked cars will begin appearing at every street corner. 

But they don’t.

She’s alone. 

She thinks. She probably doesn’t have very long before that situation changes- but it’s not as though anybody ever saw her interact with this man. There’s nothing around here for miles- just some buildings off in the distance in the direction of the city.

She checks her watch.

Bus is due in about ten minutes.

Not enough time.

Hopper always told her that being ready to improvise was one of the most important skills she’d have to hone in order to ensure her own survival. 

And Eleven Hopper is nothing if not a survivor.

So she opens the boot of the car, and floats the man into his own trunk. She takes his keys, and she gets the heck out of dodge.

She drives the opposite way from the city. Further out into the fields, until she’s losing everything in the rearview- even farmhouses. Nothingness. She’s worked here before, close to the start of her work in forestry, in the Allagash Wilderness Park. By the time she reaches a remote enough location, it’s dark. Very dark. 

She gets out, and she takes the trowel from her bag. The one she’d used over the last eight months to plant trees. To plant life.

And Eleven digs a grave. For this man, and for Joanna. The girl she’s definitely going to have to leave behind. 

When she’s done, hours later, she gets back in the car, and sits for a while. His radio had been going on and off sporadically for the past couple of hours. Eventually his companions will come looking for him. Whether or not they find him is uncertain- unlikely, given how deep he’s buried, how remote. The car is an intrinsic link- she’ll use it to move away from here, but she needs to lose it.

There really are only two outcomes here, she thinks, reading through the files she’d found stashes in the briefcase sat on his passenger seat. The pictures of her. The research. Clearly this man had gone rogue- whatever he’d been doing, it doesn’t look to be authorised. 

But now that he’s missing? People will come looking. And either they’ll assume he really did lose his mind, and then himself entirely- or they’ll realise he was disposed of. 

Which could really only mean one thing. 

They’d find her here.

She starts up the car, grateful more than ever for her lessons with Joyce before all of this. And she starts to make her way towards Montreal. She’ll find a different car. Or a bus- or a lift with a nice man in a nice truck.

Either way- it’s time to go home.

September 1989

El sips at the dregs of her strawberry shake as she sits in the little red booth at the 24/7 diner she’d ended up in straight off the bus in downtown Chicago.

She pulls the baseball cap lower over her curls. They’re still blonde, but the pink streak is paler now. Faded. Her roots are growing in. Joanna Ivy is still dying a slow death every time she looks in the mirror. Joanna’s GED still sits at the bottom of her bag, crushed under the weight of all her worldly possessions, and the quickly depleting funds she has. 

El has had to resort to doing bad things over the past month. She’d had to steal again. She’d had to lie, constantly. Her license is new- the name on it is printed in little black letters under the Ohio state banner, because she’d procured it (after a long while searching for somewhere that sold them) in a skeezy little shop in Cleveland. Tracey Smith. El isn’t bothering to give Tracey a backstory. She isn’t trying to be Tracey at all. She’d tried hiding in plain sight, but now that feels too risky. 

The last few weeks have proved that. 

Since she’d left Canada, she’d quickly confirmed that whoever was after her- the US military, probably- definitely knew of her existence at this point. Her paranoia is at an all time high. Even now, sitting in this little diner, she feels like an open target. 

She’d had a run in with them back in Cleveland. She’d had to kill three of them.

And then she’d left. Immediately.

She’s so tired of running.

The files she’d taken- with the intention of having them act as a sort of insurance policy- don’t feel like anything other than a stark reminder of what these people are capable of at this point. It’s not as though she’d ever be able to use them as any kind of leverage, or threat, because she’s too afraid to approach anybody with the story, and she’s still incredibly stuck on what to do. It doesn’t feel smart to do anything until she’s able to confirm whether or not anything is actually wrong back in Hawkins. It feels wrong. 

She feels wrong.

Eleven is sick.

She’s not dying, she’s pretty sure. But the nightmares have increased in frequency. Her nose bleeds like a leaky tap, and the nauseous tugging feeling in her gut feels like an ever-present warning of worse things to come.

So she’d given in, and done the only thing she could think of- she’d decided to get closer to Hawkins. Somewhere with a guaranteed roof over her head. 

She’s pretty sure they’ll be back on her trail soon- and to make matters worse, money is very scarce now. Getting a job is out of the question. Stealing or any other illegal way of procuring it- enough to find a place to stay while she works out the best approach and tries to figure out what’s wrong with her body- is risky, because it might draw attention to her if she’s caught. 

She fingers the worn piece of paper in her pocket.

Darla.

Her Aunt Carey lives north of her, out towards the airport. She’s already looked at the map she’d bought earlier. She can make it there on foot tonight. 

She slurps at the shake, suddenly exhausted. 

It’s so much. 

She’d forgotten how tiring it is, constantly wondering if you’re being watched. Like just by breathing, she was doing something wrong. Something harmful. The freedom she’d bought while she’d lived Joanna’s life feels a million miles away. 

It would be so nice to talk to another person again. To stay somewhere safe. 

Maybe it’s selfish- maybe she’s putting Darla’s aunt in danger- but she makes her way there anyway. She slinks down alleyways and backstreets, trying to blend in with the shadows, or the crowd, when that isn’t an available option. She gets lost for a little bit- she ends up all the way out near the edge of the city, beside a college campus. Evanston, the map tells her. She’s so tired now, she’s pretty sure she’s hallucinating. For a moment- she thinks she sees Dustin in a crowd of people. She turns away. It can’t be him. She sees whoever it is- curly haired, in a cap (kind of like hers), falter for a moment, far away- but then a bus pulls up on the road between them, and she breaks out of her frozen state, running down the street and away, trying to get back on track in the right direction.

She’s truly running on fumes when she finds Carey’s apartment block. She bites at her lip when she knocks on the door, shuffling from foot to foot. A small woman with crow’s feet and her hair puffed out like crazy answers the door, smiling at her kindly.

It’s Darla’s smile. The same one exactly, with the same smirk-y edges. She forces herself to breathe. 

Carey lets her in when she tells her her name. (Her old name.) (Joanna’s name.)

She makes tea, because it is late. Too late for coffee, she says, and she’s trying to drink less of the stuff lately, because she’s convinced it’s bad for your heart. Her apartment is small, but warm- she has a lot of plants everywhere. El’s never seen that many plants indoors before. Carey works as a nurse. She’s delighted by the stories El has about Darla, and insists that she stay in her spare room until she gets back on her feet. Her grandfather passed a month ago, so she’s alone now anyway. She works nightshifts, so she’s leaving in an hour.

“Darla called me, an’ told me about what you’re runnin’ from,” she says softly. “I know a thing or two about runnin’ from men like that. You have a place here, if you like.”

El should refuse. 

She should maybe stay just for the night. One night can’t hurt, surely? One measly night. 

One night where she gets to sleep in clean bedsheets. Where she can wash her ragged clothes in the safety of the warm apartment, and eat leftover spaghetti that Carey had in the fridge anyway, help yourself. 

She thinks about calling Darla- to tell her she’s okay. She did it once from a phone booth before she’d been on the move again, but it’s probably too risky now. If they’d found Joanna… if they’d made the connection- they might know about Darla. No point in poking the bear.

She stays the night. She sleeps better than she has in weeks, waking up late the next day. She helps Carey cook dinner that night, stirring ground beef with taco seasoning, talking aimlessly about Joanna’s supposed life. Her great big plans for the future! El is very good at lying at this point. Carey’s on shift again that evening, so she sits in front of the TV. 

Two nights. Two has to be okay. 

Two weeks later, El is starting to feel desperate.

She’d finally left the safe haven of Carey’s apartment two days ago to sneak to the closest public library to try and see if there was any further research she could do on how best to tackle the Hawkins issue. 

She could drive there. Steal a car and go- but it just seems too risky. On top of that, her physical symptoms seem to be getting worse. 

She sleeps for far longer than she used to. Fourteen, fifteen hours straight. Her appetite has shrunk to nothing, and her head always hurts. Something is wrong- she knows it, and yet she never has the energy to do anything. It had taken her every ounce of strength and resilience to leave the apartment. 

She knows Carey is worried. She knows she’s probably close to calling someone. 

When she gets home that night, Carey tries to sit her down. She’d tried this yesterday- tries to ask if she’s sick, because things seem to be getting worse rather than better. El‘s getting worse at dodging the questions. At buying herself more time. The apartment is starting to feel constrictive now rather than anything else- she’s saved the bother of coming up with another lie about having found some work at a restaurant downtown by somebody at the door.

Knocking.

Carey frowns. She gets up to get it, and El slumps in the wooden kitchen seat. The back left leg wobbles and squeaks as she does so.

And suddenly, she’s filled with a deep sense of foreboding, ice cold and adrenaline inducing. She opens her mouth, jolting to her feet-

“Don’t!”

But its too late. 

She darts out to the hall, and it feels as if time is slowing down, s-l-o-w-

The door is ajar. Carey’s in her work uniform. Nurse’s scrubs. She’s got a yellow pair of rubber gloves on from when she’d been washing the dishes.

There’s a muffled bang, and she makes a little soft noise as she staggers back, as if surprised. The men behind here- there are three of them-

They haven’t seen her yet.

She walks into the open, breathing ragged. Hands outstretched.

She has no idea why they think guns are going to be of any help to them in these situations. 

Blood trickles from the corner of the first man's mouth. His eyes bulge, and then start to bleed, slowly- his hands shake. He drops the gun. 

He’s dead before he hits the floor. She knows the two behind him are as well. 

“Jo-anna,” Carey wheezes. Her breathing is all funny. El drops to her knees, her eyes darting everywhere, madly, oh god, there is so much blood, so very much blood. Blood everywhere! People bleed so profusely when they die. Her hands quiver frantically as she presses her palms over the wound- it’s in her chest. It’s high up.

Too high up. 

There’s a trickle of blood spilling from the corner of Carey’s mouth, bubbling. She stares at El’s face, as though searching for something. She doesn’t even look frightened. 

“Just- just hold on,” El babbles. She’s been talking aloud- she only just realises there, as Carey watches her silently, her chest stuttering, twitching. “Hang on, please, oh god, oh- please, please-”

The blood is slick and hot under her hands. She’s never felt this much of it at once, seeping through Carey’s uniform. She needs to get to the phone. But if she lets go, she’ll bleed out, she’ll- she-

It doesn’t matter.

Her kind, brown eyes are glassy. They’re staring into nothing.

Her last word was a false name. 

A dead girl's name. 

A murderer’s name.

El staggers back, bumping into the wall. She raises her hand, about to press it to her mouth before she remembers the blood.

It’s not as though death is new to her. El has seen death more often than she’s seen kindness in a stranger. She’s dealt it out without mercy or forethought. 

But this lady was kind. 

She gave El sanctuary. 

And now, because of El-

She bolts to the bathroom. Scrubs at her hands, at all the blood, so much blood, Carey’s blood-  breathing harshly, everything blurry. It feels as though she’s sinking into a nightmare. 

She needs to leave. 

She’s not sure how she manages it. The bag is packed (always. Always ready to run). Her boots are on. She steps over four dead bodies.

She runs.

El spits into the alley. Once, twice. 

She rinses her mouth out with water from the bottle stashed at the top of her bag, wiping her mouth shakily. 

Her stomach twists. An empty threat. There’s nothing left to puke up.

It’s been three days.

She’s in a park. Or she was- she was in a park last night. It’s all starting to blur now, because she’s just getting sicker every day. She’s so freezing cold all the time- can’t get warm, even though she’s wearing layers upon layers of her clothes, and her brow has a near constant sheen of sweat upon it. Where did she sleep last night? In the bushes, she’s pretty sure. Harms Woods. It has been quiet, and it was dry out- and it’s not as though she can get warm when she’s inside anyway. She has her sleeping bag. She’d shivered in and out of consciousness, dipping in and out of nightmares and delirium when she’d awoken. Today has been fruitless. 

Maybe tonight she’ll sleep in that church again. The little one that hadn’t locked its doors at night. The stained glass at the back had reminded her of the one she’d gone to with Sofia, what feels like a lifetime ago. Madre María. A painted masterpiece in the window.

She’s wandering aimlessly now. Everything feels so utterly hopeless, she just wants to curl up in the bushes and pass out. Let me sleep, she thinks, let me stay asleep. 

Being awake just hurts, now. 

Being awake is painful.

She’s near that college campus again, she registers distantly. It’s getting dark, and there’ll be no place for her to sleep around here. Nowhere to make a game plan. Got to get to a bus, or a car- got to get to Hawkins. What else is there to do at this point? The world feels as though it’s closing in around her. Empty and black, a void pit- if she has to succumb to that ending, she might as well ensure her friends live first.

Her friends.

Thinking of them now doesn’t even bring about pain, not the way it used to. It no longer feels like grief. A dull, stabbing ache- a distant loss. 

Maybe it would be better to lie down here and sleep. Sleep in the alley, and let the headache grow to a blinding agony, until her head finally splits at the seams like it’s been threatening to do now for days. 

She is so, so sick. 

She stumbles forward, tripping over her laces. She stops to rub at her eyes, halted by a piercing pain in her temples again. Hurts. It all hurts. 

She kneels to tuck the fraying lace in, wincing as she sees the hole at the side of her boot. They badly need repaired, but what would be the point? Dead girls don’t need good boots. She might not be dead, but El is supposed to be. Joanna is. It’s not like she’s real anymore- she isn’t allowed to be. 

She isn’t supposed to be at all.

She stands, and observes a hoard of students making their way down the road opposite her. They’re jeering and yelling- she’s on a long road with great big fancy houses. Huge ones, one of them looks a bit like Steve’s old house, which she’d visited once. She wonders what Steve Harrington is doing right now. 

The sign on the front of the house she passes next reads PHI GAMMA DELTA. 

She mouths it to herself, numbly.

She needs to leave. Needs to sleep again. But as she continues walking- truly aimlessly at this point, she’s pretty sure she’s headed in the wrong direction from the park she’d slept in before and the church- she suddenly hallucinates something so truly out of place that El freezes, rooted to the spot.

Twice in a row?

Why on earth would she hallucinate Dustin Henderson’s curly hair twice in a row?

She shakes her head, blinking slowly- but the mirage doesn’t glimmer out of sight. 

He’s still there- walking towards the end of the road. He’s behind a big group of boys, but he’s not part of them- she had glimpsed his face as she’d stood on the opposite side of the street, observing, and he’d looked grim. Tired. 

His backpack is massive. Might be bigger than hers, which is saying something. His hair is longer now, brushing over his shoulders, which are all hunched over under his heavy bag, and he’s in baggy black jeans.

She shakes her head again, determined to dispel the image- but there he is. 

There’s just no way.

She crosses the street.

He’s a good distance away from her. She wants to call out to him- wants that so badly. To see somebody familiar. To see a friend.

But her voice won’t work. It hasn’t worked since Carey had died in front of her. Every time she tries to speak- even in the store the other day, when she’d bought the water- the words won’t come out. It’s just like when she was little, and Papa had made her hurt a mouse for the first time- all of her words had shrivelled up and vanished, and she couldn’t talk for months, not even when they locked her away in the dark room. Not even when they zapped her. 

She’s so sluggishly exhausted that it takes every ounce of strength she has left just to follow him. Staggering after him as the sun sets low in the sky, casting shadows everywhere. Shadows to hide in.

He turns left, towards a great big building in the distance, a pale block of apartments. Once again- she wants to call out. Wait. 

Help. 

Help me.

Her legs start to drag. Dustin gets further and further away.

It’s no use. She’s going to fall over again- the black spots are peppering the edge of her vision, and everything swims in front of her. 

And maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. Fate had been kind enough to buy her a few years at least- she’d got to see the sea again. Got her GED. Made some friends. 

This way, nobody else is going to bleed out in front of her. 

Maybe Dustin is leading her somewhere quiet- a place to rest.

His walking slows. 

And then-

He stops. 

He stands there, in the empty street- it’s narrow here. More of a back road. Stock still, holding onto his bag, far off. She slumps left towards the wall beside her, sliding down as the black spots dance around her vision, obscuring it briefly as Dustin turns around to face her.

Her legs give out.

She closes her eyes.

The last thing she hears before the darkness pulls her under is her name.