Chapter Text
“The whole series of my life appeared to me as a dream; I sometimes doubted if indeed it were all true, for it never presented itself to my mind with the force of reality.” - Mary Shelly, Frankenstein
The darkness begins nowhere, and lasts forever, sprawling outwards for all eternity.
There is no cold to be found there, nor warmth, nor hunger. There's a thin layer of water where the ground should be, rippling gently when you walk through it. But dipping your hands into the surface feels no different than touching the air around you, and the only light to be found is from moments that are not your own.
In this place, one is not allowed any moments. For those to exist, you need a clock, or the rising and setting sun, or cues from your body telling you time has passed. Those are all gifts, bestowed only upon the mortal.
At first, she passes her not-time by writing letters in her mind. It is good, she thinks, to turn to something familiar. She doesn't want to ever forget all the words she worked so hard to learn.
Dear Mike, she thinks, out of habit.
Dear Hopper. Dear Will, Joyce, Jonathan. Kali. Dear Max. Lucas, Nancy, Robin, and Steve. Dustin.
Remembering all the names is just as important. There are faces attached to them, adorned with smiles, and eyes that shimmer in shades of brown, green, and blue. They're jewels to her, rare, and precious, tucked away safely in her heart.
I used to write letters with lots of lies in them, because I was ashamed of my life in California. Now, my life (I do not know what else to call it,) is even worse, and I would like to be honest about it, but I can tell no one, because there is no one here to tell.
When I found myself in this place, I shouted for you all, and then, when the words got jumbled together, I just screamed. The sound went on, and on, so loud I could not believe it was coming from me. You would think I would run out of breath from it, but I never did, and my throat did not hurt after. It didn't even echo, isn't that strange? It probably already was one.
Are you happy, out there? I remember, in Lenora we had to read an essay about the man who pushed a rock up a mountain, for ever and always, because it kept rolling back down again. I got called on to stand up at my desk, and read aloud, which was not fun because I could not pronounce his name correctly, and lots of people laughed about it. I didn't understand why that was funny, but I laughed too, so that maybe they would think I was funny, instead of stupid.
Anyway.
At the end, it said, "One must imagine Sisyphus happy." I liked that part—do you remember, Will? You made a drawing of him on the corner of my notebook for me. It helped, because I felt like that sometimes. I kept trying to fix things, and close all the gates, and save the world, but it kept getting ruined again. I must imagine myself happy, even with blood dripping on my lips, and in the back of my throat, because then I am powerful, not broken.
But the thing is, I didn't really understand it until now. Everything we went through, all of that work, even when it hurt so much I thought my chest would crack open, and all my tears would spill out like a tidal wave, it was better than this. Struggling is a part of life. If you take it away, you take the joy too. I've learned that lesson now, can I go home? I want to go home.
Hopper, you told me the pain meant I was out of the cave. But I think I'm trapped here, maybe forever. I'm sorry.
I hope you are all happy. I will imagine you that way.
Love,
Jane. (El? Eleven? I do not know anymore. I am not sure how to be who you want me to.)
Then, she just thinks.
Theory number one: this is her void, and she's just trapped in here somehow. It seems like her void, and when she looks down at her body, she can still see the wet suit's grey, stretchy fabric clinging to her skin. The problem is that it does not function in the same way. She's tried entering other people's brains, and pulling them into hers, like she did with Max before, and it doesn't work. She can't even find people.
Until, without explanation, she can.
She's sitting on the ground when it happens, swishing her arms back and forth in the water, just to hear a sound that isn't expelled from her own lungs. Her mind is the only television screen left, and so she's playing back memories, holding onto their tattered remains. She thinks about Max, in flashes of bouncing red hair, and strawberry ice cream, the way she smelled like sunscreen, her perpetually skinned knees.
And then there she is, forming into existence from grey mist, along with a school desk, and her wheelchair in place of the hard plastic ones kept in classrooms.
Jane freezes, and then bolts upwards, running towards her. "Max!" she calls. "Max? MAX."
Max just frowns, and marks something down on her worksheet.
"Max, can you see me?" Slowly, she reaches one hand out towards her shoulder, shaking. It slips right through, to the nothingness her form is made of. "Please," she chokes out, her voice feeling thick with the un-shed tears clogging it's escape.
It's no use. She gives no indication that she can see, hear, or even sense her. Hell, Jane doesn't even know why she can see her now, when all previous attempts at finding people came up empty.
Which leads her to theory number two. There isn't any logic here, and so she's dead, or about to be, and this is one drawn out hallucination, like anaesthesia for the dying mind. She learned something about that at school. Sinuses firing… or was it synapses?
Either way, the sight of people slices through the darkness, and she decides to make the most of it, whatever it means.
She becomes a thief of moments.
First, she turns to Mike. He sits by the place where she last stood, as if waiting. People wearing hard, plastic hats come to clear the rubble away, and install a bench in front of a tall stone, with names etched into it's surface. Everything there is made shiny and new, like nothing bad happened at all.
Then, she watches Hopper. He cries, and drinks, and breaks things, until falling asleep in her old bed. He looks silly atop her floral quilt, too big for the frame.
Will paints a lot, even more than he did when they lived in California. Usually, his brush marks out the shapes of the Party, frozen in a tableau of battle with sharp-toothed monsters. Sometimes, images of her appear on his canvases, her hair always longer than she ever got the chance to grow it to. He paints her surrounded by vibrant flowers once, another time sitting in a diner, with a tall stack of waffles. There are never any monsters put into her portraits.
He draws Mike too, but only in unfinished sketches, hidden away in his notebooks. Half the time, he smudges the graphite with his fist, or crumples up the pages, tossing them away.
Max has to learn how to walk again. Her legs shake, and bend at the knees, until she gets angry, throwing her crutches across the room. Lucas helps her. He joins the basketball team again, and gets other people to join with him, people who were too scared to try out before. He tries to get Mike to join, but he's like a baby foal when they practice in his driveway, all knobbly knees and no coordination. He sits in the bleachers with Dustin and Max instead.
Dustin spends more time in the school's reptile room, visiting all the creatures in their tanks and terrariums. He gives them all different names—Marty Mc'lizard, Balrog, Madame Curie. Mr. Fibley, at Will's suggestion.
Jonathan goes to something called film school. Nancy moves out.
Time passes.
Jane watches.
Hopper stops trudging to the liquor store, instead filling his mornings with coffee, and laughter. He proposes to Joyce in a candlelit restaurant. Will stops ruining his drawings of Mike. Max's legs grow strong again, so strong that she can get back on her skateboard, and do tricks she never could before.
The Party dresses up in long gowns, and suits, going to the gymnasium. It looks like the Snowball, but in late spring, paper stars hanging down from the ceiling. Mike and Will leave early, stepping into the dimly lit hallway to dance alone, where no one can see them.
Time passes. Dioramas evaporate into smoke, swirling out of her reach.
All but one of her friends leave Hawkins, in a flurry of tearful goodbyes. Mike drives past the town's limits in a car stuffed with suitcases and bags, one hand on the steering wheel, the other tangled up with Will's in the passenger seat, his thumb brushing over his knuckles.
Lucas and Max go to the movies together, giggling and whispering in the glow of the projector. Hopper and Joyce start planning their wedding.
Something settles in her stomach, a heavy enough stone that flitting though these moments no longer feels weightless. She misses food, the crunch of it between her teeth, the way warm butter and maple syrup mixed together into something salty and sweet. She presses her arms around herself, trying to remember the comforting pressure of a hug. It is never tight enough, and there is no one to lean against.
Jane digs her nails into her palms, and bites at her lips, trying to feel something. Her efforts result in no scratches or wounds, her skin unmarred. She tries to remember what something, anything smells like. Fresh air after rain, or breakfast, or the pine-wood of the cabin she used to call home. It's an equally impossible task.
Mike talks to the air where she isn't, telling the memory of her about him and Will. He says they're in love, that it took him a long time to figure himself out, but that he's finally happy. He says he thinks she would understand.
She does, in a way.
Being a ghost is easier than being a girl. There are no expectations, no right and wrong things to do. When she speaks, her words float away like wisps in the stillness, never to be heard.
It is also deeply, devastatingly lonely.
It's difficult to be grateful for this hollow semblance of a being, when all she can do is silently watch the lives of other people, ones that seem so full of love and joy. Doing used to sooth the ache of loneliness in her chest, but now, it stings at her soul, leaving a bitter residue to leech into her mind. And so, she stops looking for her friends as often, instead spending more time in the gaps in between, living in stretches of dark emptiness.
Dustin's presence in her void is more tolerable.
He was offered a position at a government research program, and so he's taking a gap year. He was scouted from his involvement in the events concerning the Upside Down, which is suspicious to her, on account of her wondering how exactly they became aware of said involvement. She still doesn't trust anything to do with the government, because her time on earth gave her no reason to, but it does mean that while he isn't lonely quite like her (she doesn't think anyone could be,) his circle isn't expanding in the same way the other's are.
The work seems good, though.
"Hey, buddy," He says, crouching in front of the enclosure's glass front wall. "You get your dinner?"
"That one never does." One of Dustin's co-workers walks into the room, a tall woman in a white lab coat with a name tag that reads R. Thatcher, her heels clicking against the linoleum floor. "It's the runt of it's siblings."
"It just needs a little hand. Nothing wrong with that." He reaches into his pocket, and pulls out a candy bar, the wrapper crinkling as he tears it open. He breaks off a few chunks of nougat filled chocolate, and drops them through the feeding hatch.
The creature chirrups, dipping it's tulip shaped head to scarf the pieces up off the floor. It's still a juvenile, around the size of a house cat, with green-grey skin the texture of a frog's.
After the gates closed, a clutch of eggs were confiscated from the soldiers who had taken up residence in Hawkins, along with all the technology they'd built illegally. Most scattered, but the one's they found were arrested, including Doctor Kay.
She watched Joyce see it on the news, one hand covering her mouth. Jane wondered if she was thinking the same thing she was. If the experiments on Kali and the other women weren't sanctioned, and just a corrupt group of soldiers gone rogue, she and Kali could have lived. They could have gone free.
"For fucks sake, Henderson, you're going to get in big shit for that. You know we're not supposed to give them anything outside of their natural diet."
"Technically speaking, we don't know their natural diet," he retorts pedantically, standing back up. "It's just our best speculation. For all we know, they had Three Musketeer bars on their home planet."
She scoffs. "Not going to stop the boss from firing you."
"Nah, they need my genius." He sits at his desk, opening his notebook. It's already packed full of photos, and clippings, disjointed notes that will only ever make sense to him scrawled right next to detailed, carefully articulated paragraphs.
Jane leans over his shoulder as he searches for a blank page.
Need water/fluid for larvae to hatch, he jots down. Do they use their own stomachs? If so, why leave eggs in Lovers Lake?
That was where the military found the clutch, or at least, so they'd told Dustin when he was first briefed. It made a fair question—The Abyss had been true to it's name in it's desolate nature, and according to Dustin's notes, the Upside Down's mirror to the lake had been bone dry.
He flips to an older section, pages dedicated to behaviour and temperament.
Differences in behaviour? is scratched in bold at the top, followed by Usually non-aggressive if kept fed and not threatened. Laid/hatched in Right side up, therefore never affected by Mind flayer? Was dart flayed? Nature vs nurture, or response to care similar to what was seen in human victims? Emotional responses more complex than originally theorized?
She's already read these bits, and so she leans away again with a sigh, sitting down in the darkness, a few feet from the figures. Background noise is better than silence.
The Demogorgon (Amphibia bipedalis if you were going to use terminology that wasn't from a dnd manual) research facility is an hour outside of Hawkins' center, built on old farmland, out of the way of civilians. Dustin's drive home is accompanied by Metallica, which Jane has still not gotten used to, and does not think counts as real music, just lots of loud noises. He nods his head along to the beat anyways, thumping his hands against the steering wheel whenever he has to break.
He lives in a newer build where the town is slowly starting to sprawl outwards, a two bedroom bungalow that has too much space for him alone. Which is, of course, the point. It's the kind of place a ghost belongs, not in Will or Mike's cluttered dorm rooms, or the cozy apartment Max and Lucas share.
She watches the walls and furniture phase into existence around her as he walks inside, dropping his bag by the door, and tossing his keys into their bowl with a clatter. He dumps leftovers from a repurposed yogurt container onto a plate, and chucks it into the microwave, settling down at the kitchen table. There are books, and various mechanical parts scattered across it, trying to make up for all the space unused by the empty chairs.
Sometimes Steve comes over, but even one really good friend can't substitute for an entire ecosystem of them, in the same way that one boyfriend in a cabin can't accomplish the same task. Neither can watching one lonely Party member to ease your own solitude, but at least she's self aware about that fact.
Dustin shovels his supper into his mouth, and gets ready for bed (she doesn't watch that part, obviously, as she's fairly certain it falls under the "or something," of "what if I was taking a massive shit,") before turning off the lights, and burrowing himself under the covers. His curls scrunch up against the pillows, in a way that makes her miss her own hair. She still has some, but it's permanently slicked down to the shape of her skull, pulled back in a tight bun.
She misses the way it fell long down her back in California, and even the stupid bangs Joyce cut, because Jonathan told her it meant she was a real Byers. One time, he called Nancy on the phone, asking her to teach him how to braid it for Jane's picture day because Joyce was too busy, mumbling something about the importance of ties at funerals as he worked.
She takes a deep breath, and steps forward. Her hand will go right through, just like it did when she tried to touch Max, just like it always does now. But maybe the illusion of it will remind her of her own hair enough for it to be comforting anyways.
Her fingertips reach out carefully, ready to trace over the outline of his soft curls.
Instead, she finds herself running down a hill, grass swishing around her ankles. There's someone's hand interlaced with her own, but it isn't providing enough support to counteract the discombobulation, and she goes tumbling to the ground, rolling down the rest of the gentle incline.
She sits up slowly, and rubs her eyes with the backs of her hands, expecting the picture to falter. There's so much light that it's overwhelming, casting down onto her from the clear blue sky overhead.
The owner of the hand, pulled down with her when she fell, is laying on his back beside her, dark hair hanging down above his eyes.
"Mike?" She shifts onto her knees, and places a tentative hand on his shoulder, giving it a shake. He doesn't react, staring unblinkingly at nothing, like a marionette with the strings chopped off. She lets go, scrambling backwards, away from him.
At the top of the hill, four figures loom, back lit by the horizon.
Jane pushes herself to her feet, squinting out at them. They're carrying bulky equipment in their arms, some of them with bags, others with tall, spindly pieces of metal. This moment can't be new, because it belonged to her once, at least partially. She remembers the cicadas, the smell of honeysuckle baking in the sun, and that the group is on their way to build Cerebro.
Three of the people turn, starting their journey towards the peak again. One drops his things, and begins moving towards her.
It's Dustin—or, Dustin as he was, so many years ago now, in a yellow and green "Camp Know Where" T-shirt, with a matching baseball cap. He pauses a few yards away, staring at her like he's just as perplexed.
She stares back. For a minute, nobody says anything.
"He isn't moving," Jane whispers eventually, glancing at Mike's body.
"Because the memory doesn't go like this," he answers. "While we're on the topic, how are you doing that?"
She looks back up at him, tilting her head to the side. "Doing what?"
"Changing it." He steps closer. "Acting like a sentient, autonomous being."
"What else would I be?"
"I don't know, a, a byproduct of electrical brain impulses during REM sleep?"
"I do not know what that means," she tells him, frustrated.
"A dream, El." He exhales heavily, looking down at the grass. "You're a good one, but you don't get to be anything else."
"No," she says forcefully, glaring at him. "My thoughts, who I am, that's all I have left. You don't get to tell me they belong to anyone else." She turns in a circle, taking in the scenery. "I imagined everything," she rationalises out loud. "And now I'm imagining this." She swallows. "You aren't real."
"Yes, I am," he insists. "I mean, this isn't, technically speaking." He gestures broadly around them with his arms. "It's in my head, but I'm really dreaming about it, so… I exist. I think therefore I am, right?"
She nods, because she actually does know that one. It's a sentiment that's become all the more relevant to her lately.
He watches her carefully, something shifting in the depths of his eyes. Maybe he sees something in hers to make him wonder, or maybe it's nothing more than a wish. Sometimes, hope doesn't need to be anything other than the desire to believe, regardless of sense or reason.
All at once, she's swept up in his arms as he barrels towards her, wrapping them around her. She hasn't been held in so long, that at first she doesn't know what to do with herself, standing stiffly. But then she feels his warmth, and the way he's leaning against her, and she's hugging him back, melting into the embrace.
"Hi," she says, making a sound that's part laugh, and part the tears finally bubbling out of her, like they were waiting for a shoulder to soak into.
"Hi El," he echoes, squeezing her tighter.
"Jane," she corrects, pulling back a little. "Or… that is what I call myself now, anyway."
He nods. "Jane." He lets go of her, his arms falling back to his sides. "Suits you."
She mops her face with her sleeve, before eyeing him dubiously. She's spent too long in the darkness for this comfort not to feel like a trap. "If this was your dream, you would not know you were dreaming," she points out.
"I always know I'm dreaming," he argues. "I taught myself to lucid dream when I was a kid, 'cause I read this article from Harvard's neuroscience department about it."
"Lucid?"
"Yeah, like, being conscious while you're asleep," he explains. "Being able to change things in your dreams. Super useful for nightmares. Or remembering dead friends." He winces. "Sorry. That was blunt. But are you?" His eyes widen. "Holy shit, was Mike right? I said I believed, and I wanted to. We all did. But it was just one of those things, you know? Like…" he snaps his fingers. "Like Santa, in middle school."
She never got to go to middle school, and she never believed in Santa either, even though Hopper tried to explain Christmas to her, so she just frowns. "Right about what?"
"That's awful." Dustin flops onto his back. "Worse than awful."
"Yes," she agrees solemnly. She's not sure how much time has passed- dreams are funny like that- just that instead of her watching, alone, the two of them spent it debriefing, pulling up blades of grass, and tiny flowers from the roots, to give themselves something to do with their hands.
Jane learns about Mike's theory that she escaped, using Kali's illusions to make them think she died, standing in the wall between worlds. In turn, she tells him that she didn't, but that she isn't sure if she died or not, either—she remembers the soldiers coming, being pulled out of the back of the truck, and then nothing but darkness.
He asks about her saying goodbye to Mike in her void, and then explains what he told the Party about it, when she doesn't have any recollection of that either.
Finally, she tells him about where she has been (she doesn't know what exactly it is, but it's decidedly not somewhere peaceful with three waterfalls.)
"Maybe it is your void," he says, propping himself up onto his elbows. "Just with limited capabilities. Like it's on power saver mode, or something."
She furrows her brows.
"It's a computer thing," he clarifies, without needing prompted. "It saves energy, but as a trade off, there are some things you would usually be able to do with it, that you can't while it's turned on."
"But I'm in your head." She tucks her knees to her chest. "If I am saving power, why can I do that with you now, but not with anyone else?"
"I was already dreaming about a memory with you in it." He sits up, cross-legged, shifting to face her. "Maybe it takes less brain power to slip into someone's mind when the idea of you is already in there."
"Then… my body has to be somewhere, right?" She asks hopefully. "For my brain to be in saver mode, it needs to exist."
"I don't know," he tells her apologetically. "I hope so, but this whole thing is just a theory. I know as much as you do." When he sees her face fall, he clears his throat, and holds out a hand to her to help her up. "Hey," he says. "I have an idea."
She lets him haul her to her feet. "What?"
"Well, I've never shared a dream with someone before." He flashes her a toothy grin. "We should do something fun. Whatever you want."
She's reminded of old, sick dogs whose appointment to be put down is already on the calendar, being fed a piece of chocolate on their last day, because there won't ever be time for the poison to catch up to them.
But god, she misses sweetness.
"I want food," she says "Waffles."
"Coming right up."
The diner Dustin dreams them into is the kind with checkered floors, and puffy pleather booths lining the walls. Most of the tables are full, although she can't seem to make out the words anyone's saying, no matter how hard she tries.
Upon glancing down at herself, she discovers her wet suit is gone, replaced with a dress that falls down past her knees, patterned with flowers in shades of purple. When she turns her head, she feels her hair tickle her cheek. It's down, and so long, fluttering over her shoulders. She clutches at it, tugging lightly at the strands to verify their existence.
It's a small thing, but it matters deeply, to her. For the first time in a long time, she feels like herself.
Maybe even the self she once hoped to grow up to be.
"Okay." Dustin slides into the bench across from her, setting down the two plates he's balancing on his hands. "I got your waffles. With berries, and extra whipped cream instead of maple syrup." He pushes it in front of her, with a flourish. "Plus those little chocolate shaving things."
He looks like his current self now too, the version of him that up until this point, she's only ever known through watching from the darkness. He dresses more professionally now- he has to, for work- but there are always touches of his personality shining through, from the messily applied black nail polish, to the outlines of bats tattooed on his inner elbow.
Grabbing her fork and knife, she attacks her ginormous stack of fluffy squares, and shoves a bite into her mouth, not caring about how she looks. She may not get physical pangs anymore, but that doesn't erase the cravings.
She chews hungrily, and then slower, her excitement dimming a little. She can feel the texture, but the flavours seem hollow, like she knows what they should be, and that they're there, but can only taste the concept of them.
"It tastes like nothing," she tells him, swallowing.
"Yeah." He leans back in his seat. "Taste is the sense that our brains haven't really perfected tricking us into believing in our dreams. Sorry."
She shrugs. "It isn't you fault."
"It's my dream."
That gets a small smile out of her, and she ducks her head away, looking around the room. "This is the diner Will painted," she realises. "In his portrait of me."
"You saw that? It's a good one. One of his best." He's quiet for a beat, before adding more seriously "We all miss you, so much, you know? More than anything." He picks at a chipped corner of varnish on the table. "There's… something you should probably know, though. About Will and Mike."
"They are boyfriends," she finishes for him, matter of factly. "I know that already."
"Oh. Right." He hesitates. "Are you okay? I know you and him never technically, officially broke up, because of these... circumstances. If you were upset about it, I would get it."
She shakes her head. "I am not mad about them being together. It's a good thing. For them. I am upset, but that isn't about that, or even Mike. I just feel…" she presses a hand against her sternum, where the ache is strongest, running in a line from her throat down to her stomach, and making a pit stop in her heart.
"Like my world has shrunk to this little thing, so small that trying to hold onto it is pointless. If I'm alive, at least this will be over, some day, but if I am… a ghost, it might be forever. You will all die, and I will just go on existing like this." She pauses to take a breath, setting down her utensils. "Soon you will wake up, and I don't even know if I'll be able to do this again."
"Hey. I'm not going to leave you alone." Dustin's voice is firm, leaving no room for debate. "Lucid, remember? I can dream about you tomorrow night too."
She says nothing, giving him a skeptical look instead.
He sighs. "Okay, uh, you know how when the Party first found you, Lucas showed you a spit swear?"
She makes a face. "It means you don't break a bond. I remember. It was gross."
He laughs. "Yeah, disgusting," he agrees. "How about this instead?" He rests his elbow on the table between them, holding out his pinkie to her. "I'm going to dream about you every night, until we figure out how to get you out of there. Because we will." He meets her eyes. "I promise."
Her lips twitch upwards, and she stretches her hand across the distance, linking their little fingers together.
"Promise," she whispers.