* curiouser.

it's the gentlest touch that the tiniest wheeler places on her wrist, further connecting her to the VERY REAL, MATERIAL WORLD around them. she wonders, sometimes, what had made her kids so sweet. they were kind, infinitely so, and at times uncharacteristically unselfish for children . . . and brave, she thinks.

karen had stood there in holly's care bear slippers before: a child watching her parents suffer from something she couldn't quite explain. alice had not been so courageous as to stare it down with such a reverent kindness . . . to embrace it. for all the credit the smallest wheelers seemed to give her, she felt none of it had been earned. not when they were all their own kinds of heroes.

as holly's protest begins to ring through the air, karen attempts to squash it, her voice a sort of coo as it tries to interrupt. ' HOLLY, ' she parrots it back to her in the same tone her youngest had used, and there was a sort of playfulness to it, meant to ease the tension that still seemed to permeate the air.

is it her? is it holly seeing what the fever dreams create, nightmares bleeding into real life and twisting everything into something more, something worse, something scary?

NO. she knows what she saw, and what she heard. there is no hiding that or forgetting- that image of her mother on the bathroom floor will live on in her head ( UNTIL IT’S REPLACED BY HER MOTHER ON THE KITCHEN FLOOR INSTEAD ) and holly frowned, shaking her head. “you’re lying,” she accuses quietly, like she’s disappointed but at the same time, like she’s been shown the truth. maybe … maybe henry’s right.

i know now what i always knew !

independent, very private + very selective karen wheeler of the duffer brothers' + netflix's stranger things. totally divergent, canon noncompliant and plot based.

standing beyond the rippling threshold was a girl. a delicate, ethereal figure who should not have come to this home of nightmares. a star was forged by her hand, faint, yet burned with promise. the fabric of that forsaken place forever disturbed, as if the universe itself stretched its limbs and sighed⸺ FORCED TO RELEASE ITS PRISONER, RETURNED TO A LIFE OUT OF REACH.

the world hadn't waited, it never did, but holly wheeler had. she pushed away eager, well-meant welcomes⸺ a tad suffocating for jane's state. recollection is fuzzy: the time between a teenager pushing her brother, sister, friends back, ordering space; the time between jane climbing a staircase under karen's graceful guidance to help prepare a shower... TO NOW. when she emerges ( twenty minutes later ) her skin is pink, blisters already sprouting from the near boiling water. she won't look in the mirror. after another half hour, she drapes the provided dressing gown around shivering flesh. she makes no announcement that she's finished in the bathroom, merely trudges to holly's room, and waits.

when her saviour returns, the door is shut immediately, granting much needed privacy. the mage sits cross legged in the center of the bed, gnawing at raw cuticles. she opens her mouth to speak, when @clehric interjects: “ YOU DON'T HAVE TO TALK, ” and lowers herself beside jane. throbbing chest tightens, emotions threatening to break. she can't explain it: the agony of feeling, of being human again. instead, she lunges forward without warning, arms thrown around holly's neck. she squeezes. hard. it's an awkward position, but she only holds it for a minute, breathing in the sweet scent of holly's hair, before pulling back, forcing hands into her lap to stop picking.

it takes far longer than she's happy with for the crowd to disperse. some agree to come back tomorrow, reluctance in their voice but UNWILLING to argue with a girl that just crossed dimensions- a wheeler, at that. others won't stray further than the threshold of the front door, taken to sit comfortably in the living room with untouched refreshments her mother laid out before ... her brother sits on the stairs leading up to the bedrooms- but that doesn't IRK holly. she lets him be, because now that she remembers, she understands.

her bones are weary, her muscles ache- the last time she felt this tired was in '87 ... not again, since. her mother's descending and they cross paths on the stairs. holly walks into karen's open arms and wraps her own around her waist. her eyes close as she tucks her head in to slender ( SCARRED ) neck and she exhales slowly, releasing a breath she didn't realise she'd been holding. "is she okay?" she mumbles quietly, even though she knows there's no real answer. karen tries anyway. "she will be." it's enough for holly to nod again, extracting from her mother's comforting embrace to trot the rest of the way upstairs- she feels a number of eyes on her back until she disappears from view ... they can wait.

the shower drips as she passes the bathroom, steam still wafting in from under the door- holly doesn't hesitate ( she does knock, but she doesn't wait ) before she's retreating to her bedroom. jane sits on her bed, hair still dripping but dried at the ends, and holly lets out a huffed breath of relief. fending off THE MASSES had taken a while and the almost eighteen year old had had enough. had they always been like that? is that what jane was used to, before? had anyone just let her breathe? when her eyes meet jane's, holly smiles. a proper, true smile because ... holy crap, she's here. she's REAL and she's HERE and holly let herself sink back against the door for a second before she's crossing the room. she sits on the edge of her bed, one leg curled up underneath her. and when she tells jane there's no obligation on her to speak, holly just gets her arms up in time to catch the formerly years older girl. it's almost a mirror image to holly and karen on the stairs- so she tries to offer the same kind've comfort, but she's not sure if she succeeds as well as her mom.