My Magnets

“Is this…” he trails off, trying to find the right words. “Uh, is this about me kinda barging in?”

“I don’t care that you’re here, Jim.” She’s the one to roll her eyes now. “You’re here sometimes during the week and I already told you that’s fine. And the boys love it.”

“Then…” He’s honestly scared to guess because damn is she scary when she’s mad. “Assuming that you couldn’t handle it yourself?” 

He can tell that’s it and it takes everything in him to not blurt out in his own defense that he never thought that at all.

“That’s exactly it,” she says bluntly, stepping out on the porch to face him and pulling the door shut behind her.

She’s ridiculously underdressed for someone who is nearly always cold and it’s completely absurd to stand on the porch discussing this. He says as much.

“Joyce, get back inside. We can discuss this like adults. I’m not gonna yell, you know me.” She definitely knows him and she definitely knows he has a temper and can yell. But he’s been working really hard on the whole being a decent human thing.

“Fine,” she snaps, opening the door and padding over to the hole in the wall they’re repairing, because clearly that is what they’re working on in spite of her frustrations and reservations.

He sets his tools down and turns toward her, putting a hand on her arm. “Hey, look at me for a sec, please?” 

She turns, crosses her arms, and looks at him. 

“I want you to know right off that I know you can deal with this, deal with it all,” he waves his hand around. “Most folks don’t know just how much you’ve taken care of for years. I guess I just assumed that you could do this, the patching the wall and whatever. But I also know it’s hard. With Christmas coming, I guess I figured if I took care of the supplies, you’d have more for other stuff.”

“More money,” she says, eyebrows raising. “For Christmas presents for the boys.”

“Uh yeah.”

“Okay,” she huffs. “I still don’t like it.”

“Yeah, I can tell that,” he shrugs self-deprecatingly. “And I should have been more aware. Next time I want to do something like this, I’ll ask. Okay?”

“Fine,” she says, finally uncrossing her arms.

“I get a good meal out of the deal, right? In exchange?” he says. “It’s lasagna night?”

“Yes.”

“And,” he smiles at her. “I get to work on a project with you, so…” he trails off.

“Jim, I’m still mad,” she retorts.

“Yeah right,” he snorts, hearing absolutely no fight left in her voice.

“Yeah,” she says and he swears she chuckles. “Right.”

“Where do you think we start?”

“Rip up Lonnie’s ‘repairs’ and go from there, I think.” Her hands are on her hips and she’s scowling at the boarded up hole. He’s just pleased she’s scowling at the hole instead of him.

“Can I help?”

The kid appears out of nowhere, all the time. It’s sorta uncanny and he’s not used to it but Joyce doesn’t even blink.

“Put on your coat, baby. It’s gonna get cold in here while we do this.”

“Okay,” he says, then immediately disappears.

“And shoes!” Joyce yells to him. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you wandering around in your socks near our construction zone.”

He returns only a beat later, balancing as he ties his shoelaces. “Mike still doesn’t know how to tie his shoes. He always gets his mom or Nancy to tie them then he slips them off and on. What can I do?”

It’s been about a month since they rescued Will and sometimes it seems like a lifetime, but one thing he’s still surprised by how quiet the boy is but how, at the same time, he has so much to say. He just waits to talk to people who will listen.

“Grab the other side of this tarp, kid. Let’s get it off then we’ll take off the boards and see what’s going on underneath.”

Joyce has backed away to the kitchen where she’s pouring coffee for both of them, talking softly with Jonathan who is there as well. As Joyce brings the coffee into the living room and sets it on the end table, Jonathan calls out “Chief, do you want any bacon?”

“I always want bacon!” he calls back and catches the smiles on the Byers’ faces and a warmth floods through him. He’s missed this. The peaceful domesticity, the camaraderie, the wholesomeness.

On the very edge of the warmth is a creeping chill though. The fear that he’s gonna mess it up somehow or that it can’t last and he doesn’t deserve it anyway.

Time is not on her side. 

Logistically, time is not on her side when it comes to the weather, the bills, and holiday shopping. 

It is way too cold to have her house in a shambles and in spite of what she argued, she had not been able to get the wall redone before it was well into December. Particularly irksome was the fact that Lonnie had been the one to do the temporary repairs. That was an issue of pride though. Pride that she needed to swallow. Regardless, by the time Jim came around to work on it with her, they’d been freezing for weeks.

She is behind financially since she took off time for Will. It had been an inevitable choice, almost no choice at all, really. But they’d taken a huge hit and it is difficult to recover from it. 

And holiday shopping, well, finances make that hard to begin with. But after finding a way to even buy the boys’ gifts, the matter of finding the time to do it was going to pose yet another hurdle.

Mostly though, time is a thief when it comes to her boys. 

Somehow she needs to find time to work with Jonathan so he can practice driving and get his license. Somehow she needs to find a way to get his car in working order and insure him too, but those are problems for another day. Her first baby can already drive, technically speaking. It isn’t pretty though and he needs more practice with all the rules of the road and using a turn signal and all the details. She can’t imagine finding the time to work with him, but more than that she can’t fathom how this freedom for him will lead him farther from her. So instead of thinking of how fast he’s growing up (and away) or thinking of all the milestones she’s missed with him in the chaos of their lives thus far she thinks of it like an item on a checklist. Car insurance. Safe, functioning vehicle. Practice.

Then there’s the fact that Will is growing up too.

“Don’t you want to sit on Santa’s lap, baby?” she asks him when they’re at Melvald’s annual Christmas party.

“Mom,” he whispers. “That’s not Santa.” His eyes are huge and his gaze serious. “It’s Mr. Donaldson in a costume. And that’s for the little kids anyway.”

She desperately wants to tell him he is a little kid, god he’s only nine. She seriously considers begging him to stay little because she can already feel his older brother slipping away from her and they were just babies a bit ago. Almost immediately her attention swivels to her own emotions, so much closer to the surface since Will’s disappearance– and they’d been close to begin with. She takes a breath, locks down all the feelings, and responds.

“Okay, um, maybe we get some dessert then?” She glances toward the table laden with sugary treats.

“Sure,” he shrugs good-naturedly. “Mom?”

She looks at that sweet face with the huge brown eyes staring at her in question and feels her heart well up with gratefulness that she gets more time with him when, for a short time, she thought she might never again.

“Yeah baby?” she replies gently, holding back the urge to stroke his cheek or ruffle his hair.

This earns her a look as close to a scowl as Will has ever delivered to her and she wants to remind him that she calls his brother that too, but manages to bite her tongue.

“Do you think El is out there?”

“What?” she asks abruptly. This hasn’t come up at all, it’s not in context, and she’s genuinely surprised. He doesn’t talk about these things unless he’s at an appointment and even then, it’s usually prompted. He talked to Jonathan once, even Jim once very briefly after one of his appointments, but not with her. It’s as if he doesn’t want to upset her. She’s tried to let him know that she’ll listen, made herself available if he opens up, but this is an angle she doesn’t expect.

“You know,” he says, grabbing a slice of pie and taking it over to the table where she had left her purse earlier. “El,” he whispers conspiratorially. 

“Sure-” She nearly says “baby” again but quickly swaps it out. “Kiddo. I know who you’re talking about. What do you mean though?”

“Mom. I mean do you think she’s out there? Mike, Dustin, and Lucas think she’s… you know.”

Oh yes she knows.

“I want her to be safe,” is what she settles on answering. Because she doesn’t want that little girl out there alone. She certainly doesn’t want her truly gone. Definitely doesn’t want her in the Upside Down. Joyce can’t imagine what this safe scenario would look like, but it’s what she hopes for. 

She wishes she could see the girl at least one more time and thank her.

“I think she’s out there,” Will says.

“Do you…know?” she asks, not bothering to explain what she means.

“It’s more than thinking she’s okay. But maybe less than knowing,” he shrugs. “I think I’d feel if she was, like, eliminated.”

She cringes but nods.

“She’s somewhere,” he nods.

He baked cookies. Actually baked. He hadn’t even known where the measuring cups were. Had to dig out his mom’s cookbook from a random box. The cookies turned out pretty damn good, too. Now he set the plate out with the other desserts and peeled back the wrap from the top.

“Wow, did Lonnie’s girl make those for you to bring?”

Predictably, it’s Callahan who asks that. His inclination is to lash out with things like “She’s her own person, not Lonnie’s,” or “Joyce isn’t my personal chef,” or anything really. But he knows that the officer enjoys antagonizing people, getting satisfaction out of it.

“I know how to bake,” is all he says, scooping a bunch of the salty Chex mix stuff that Flo brings in by the bucket load, and walks away.

He mingles– a skill that, like baking, he is rusty at. It’s exhausting. He talks about his officers’ kids and how they’re doing in school or sports. He mostly listens as he didn’t really get this far with Sara but, if he’s honest, he doesn’t mind hearing about their experiences. They discuss caring for aging parents and how to manage all that goes along with that. His parents are both gone now and he feels a pang of nostalgia for those days. Figuring out how to make sure his mom paid bills on time when he was off living in a different state was a nightmare, but he kinda wishes he could get that time back. They talk about work and what they do to unwind at the end of a stressful day. He shares stories about his time as a “big city cop” with those who are happy to listen.

So yeah, it’s exhausting but it isn’t bad. He thinks he could get used to it. Maybe he’ll condition himself to work up to these social things and they’ll become easier.

He catches Flo’s eye and wanders over.

“Having a good evening, Chief?” She gives him a broad smile and he knows she’s genuinely pleased to have him at the event and even happier that he’s alert and coherent and interacting with people. He’s spent too long hiding away.

“Yeah,” he says and leaves it at that. He really doesn’t want everyone to think that all of a sudden he’s a softie or something like that.

“Well, I don’t want to burst your bubble-”

“Flo,” he cuts her off. “Don’t tell me you’re going to bring up work during a party!” he teases. For all her efforts to get him to branch out, she often has a one-track mind. It’s probably what makes her good at her job though.

“I think you have an HR problem that you’re going to need to address sooner rather than later,” she tells him, seemingly unamused by his teasing.

“I don’t have an HR department to help with that? A staff member who takes care of it?” He feels light this evening and mostly untroubled. It’s not that life is breezy or straightforward, but it does seem easier at the moment and this jovial teasing feels natural.

“Well, we aren’t exactly Chicago or New York,” she retorts. “We’re Hawkins, in case you’ve forgotten. As chief, this is all yours.” 

“Great,” he sighs. “Tell me what to deal with and I’ll work on it Monday. After coffee.”

She purses her lips before blurting, “Callahan.”

He can’t say he’s surprised even before she divulges the details.

“That mom with the boy whose arm was broken? Back in November? She complained about his disrespect.”

“Uh huh,” he nods, remembering.

“Then there’s Mrs. Lathe who he’s spoken with on the phone a number of times. Says he’s downright condescending. Patty over at the diner, Doris who lives on 10th and Pine, Mrs. Willoughby and even the Byers kid.”

“Will?” he asks, surprised and puzzled. 

“No, the older one. Jonathan. He said that he thought Callahan was patronizing toward him, the Wheeler girl, and especially his mom.”

“Uh, yeah. That seems accurate.” He cringes, thinking of all the things his officer could have said as well as the conversation they’ll be having next week. “I’ll…deal with that.”

“You do that, Jim,” then she pats him on the cheek and follows that with a kiss like she did when he was a kid and walks back to the party, leaving him standing there thinking of exactly how to discuss this.

“You ever thought of ripping out the carpet and refinishing the hardwood?”

She stops with her sandwich halfway to her mouth to stare at him.

Forehead scrunched up, all she says is a monotone, “What?”

“In the hallway,” he says, as if it were obvious in spite of the fact that he’d given her absolutely no context. 

They were in the Blazer eating lunch, leftovers that Flo– bless her– had sent home with him after their staff party. The fancy little sandwiches were a bit worse for the wear a day later, but they still tasted fine to him and Joyce hadn’t seemed anything but grateful.

“My carpet?” she clarifies.

Or maybe he doesn’t clarify because, yeah, obviously he thought they were talking about her hallway carpet. 

“Joyce, your kid burned a monster in the hallway and the evidence is right there every time you walk past it.” It’s gross. The carpet is all melted together and sort of scorched. And he kinda hates that they have to see it and think of everything.

“Oh,” she says, slowly working on her lunch once more. 

“Well?”

“Do you just like having projects to work on or what?” She looks at him. Really looks and he turns away for a second as if it’s too much.

“Uh, part of it is that, yeah. I don’t want to be bored and slip into old routines, fall back into old patterns. It helps if I do something with my hands, stuff that requires effort.”

“Oh,” she says again.

“Part of it is that I like-” 

Damn, how to say this part? Because the easy way to say it is that he likes spending time with her. She and her boys have become synonymous to him with happiness, or at least with a feeling of deep satisfaction. But that is way too much to say.

“I like not being alone all the time.” It’s a compromise of an answer. It’s true. But it doesn’t describe the whole of it.

Still, her eyes widen just a tiny bit as she continues to take him in with that gaze.

“And I hate that you’re reminded of that place and the monster and everything else every time you walk down your own damn hall,” he finishes and she snorts at that, any tension there’d been breaking.

“Let’s do it.”

“Really?” He doesn’t know why he’s surprised.

“Didn’t you just suggest it?” she teases.

“Um, yeah. So, next weekend? If you don’t work,” he clarifies.

She cringes. “I don’t work but it’s the last weekend before Christmas and as soon as I get paid, I need to get the boys their gifts. It’s my last chance.”

“Why don’t you shop and I’ll get them to help with the demo?” 

“You don’t have to do it, Hop,” she says, tilting her head and pursing her lips.

“Thought we already established that I need something to work on to keep busy,” he reminds her.

She caves easily, never wanting to fight it to begin with. “Fine. If you come early enough, maybe I can get done with my shopping and get home soon enough to make us all dinner.”

He feels that happy, satisfied sensation again.

Wiping his hands on the napkin Flo had tucked into the package of leftovers, he then reaches in and grabs the last couple cookies he’d made.

Wordlessly, Joyce accepts the one he proffers and lets her head thunk against the headrest, eyes closed as she chews slowly.

“Hop? Are these… your mom’s?” 

He nods smugly.

“How very domestic of you,” she teases.

“What? You didn’t know I could bake?” he scowls.

“I’ve known you longer than anyone else left in this town aside from Flo. You never bake!” she laughs. “But I think it’s wonderful.”

He blushes and then decides to tell her.

“I’ve been trying more things, to be healthier, you know.”

She nods, still smiling, but mouths healthy cookies silently.

“But also, Joyce,” he looks at her and lowers his voice even though they’re the only ones there. “I’ve been leaving food in a safe spot in the woods at one of the places that girl, Jane, El, whatever. Near one of the places she turned up back then.”

She’s so still, watching him with a look that’s so hopeful and he wishes for a moment he hadn’t told her this because he doesn’t want her to be sad that he doesn’t have answers.

“I’ve never seen anyone, but the food is always gone and the containers always get returned.” He pauses. “The last couple times, I’ve felt like someone was watching me.”

“Will thinks she’s out there,” Joyce whispers back to him. “He says he doesn’t know anything, but he’s sure she’s not really gone.”

“I think it’s her,” he says. She nods and it’s like they’re sharing another secret. The first secret is all the things that happened in November that they aren’t allowed to talk about. But this, this is a good secret. 

She nearly made it to her lunch break before she felt it. The tightness in her chest, the inability to take a full breath, the darkness at the edge of her line of vision. The morning had gone well, aside from the fact that she had cried after seeing the boys off to school. Work had felt normal. Maybe the most normal thing in a long time. But now she could feel the panic creeping up on her.

She’s a breath away from the tipping point when she’s jerked back to the present by a gentle thunk and the words, “When’s your lunch?”

“What?” she asks Hopper, scrambling to get back on track.

He nudges his pack of unfiltered Camels toward her to ring up and asks her again, “When’s your lunch? Thought you might not want to eat alone.”

She looks up at him but he’s staring everywhere but at her.

“Um,” she wiggles her fingers as she holds her hand out and he places the cash in her palm. “I can take my lunch now,” she says, immediately realizing that she hasn’t brought anything.

“Flo brought sandwiches she made with leftover turkey from Thanksgiving. Said she never wants to eat turkey again, but I think she just wants to make sure I’m not eating junk.” A small smile flits across his face. “Grab your jacket and let’s go.”

So she does. Her coat is in back and she tells Donald she’ll return in an hour. Honestly, it seems like she could get away with being gone longer, he's just so grateful to have her working again. She’s even managed to finagle a small raise in her salary.

They climb into Hopper’s Blazer and unpack Flo’s lunch, sitting in comfortable silence for a moment before he speaks.

“You looked like you were in another world back there,” he gives a single nod of his head toward Melvald’s.

“Yeah,” she says around a bite of turkey. “It just hit me that my boys are at school, alone, all day. Well, not alone,” she corrects herself. “But not with me. Not where I can see them. And my chest got all tight and I couldn’t breathe right and…” she trails off.

“Thought that might be the issue,” he says casually, as if the issue really isn’t one at all.

“It’s not a new thing.” For some reason she feels like she needs to explain it, partially because she is really tired of being “Crazy Joyce” and partly because it doesn’t feel right to make him worry over something like this. If he's worrying.

“I remember, Joyce,” he says gently. “You don’t need to explain it. But we can talk about it if you want.”

That’s the difference with Jim that has always existed, since childhood. It wasn't the panic attacks and anxiety that bothered him. It was her pain and discomfort that was hard for him to deal with. 

“I don’t. Not now,” she said decisively. “I was actually wondering if you wanted to talk about…what happened.”

The look of utter befuddlement that crosses his face is completely endearing. 

“Uh, yeah,” he says, swallowing. “I thought that’s what I was asking about.”

She makes a little noise, a combination of frustration and amusement. “No,” she laughs. “Um, I was wondering if we could talk about what happened when you…left. For Vietnam.”

“Oh.” That. That was a long time ago, their past.

Fumbling for words she tries to explain. “Only if you want to. Or, I guess I want to,” she shrugs. “Look, it felt normal having you around while we were looking for Will. Like you’ve always been around and like-” she breaks off and looks out the window then mumbles quickly, “Like we’d always been friends.”

“Uh huh,” he nods, starting to get the picture. “You– you wanna talk about this now?”

Yes she wants to talk about it. Because while they were working together, it seemed right. Not necessarily like no time had passed, but more that no distance had come between them. And as soon as Will was discharged from the hospital, no more Hop. That left a hole that she hadn’t noticed existed until he came back and filled that gap.

She didn’t like it, the hole. But she didn’t know if they were still friends or even could be now. Maybe there was too much hurt, too much history. Maybe him leaving for war, her marrying Lonnie and him marrying Diane, her divorce and his losses were too much, too messy. And the good parts of their friendship were in the past, just a happy memory. But she didn’t want that to be the case.

“Yes,” she says quickly, before she can decide otherwise. “I want to talk about it now. Jim, there’s a huge chunk of years where we weren’t.

“I was too busy at the time, wrapped up in taking care of the boys and avoiding crap with Lonnie, working and trying to keep things together. I didn’t notice that we weren’t friends anymore until you were back. Really back, not just living in Hawkins again, but back working with me to find Will.

“I don’t know if that makes any sense,” she sighs. A huge bite of sandwich goes in her mouth so she doesn’t have to say anything else, so she can’t say anything stupid.

“I don’t think we can have this whole conversation over lunch,” he begins.

She looks stricken as if she thinks he means it's not worth talking about, but that's not what he means at all. He notices almost immediately, backtracking and clarifying. 

“No, Joyce, I don’t mean that I don’t want to. I just think it’s bigger than a single chat. I think it would be…nice for it to be more than just one conversation, actually. There’s a lot of stuff in that gap that I want you to know.” Now he’s the one looking out the window. 

“Fuck this is weird,” he mutters and she lets out laugh so loud that he grins as well.

“I just remember when I was a kid, feeling safe with my friend, you. And last week in the chaos I felt safe again. I would rather have my friend back, but if you’re not in a position to work on that, because my choices hurt you in the past or because your head isn’t in the right place, I can…”

“No, nono, no,” he tries not to sound desperate, but honestly, her friendship used to be an anchor and maybe he can claw his way out of the dark hole he’s been living in if he has a reason. Maybe he can be decent or just plain human if he has a reason. “Friends,” he starts, almost getting choked up. “Friends would be nice. It’d be good.”

“M-kay,” she replies. “So, along those lines, Will has an appointment with Dr. Owens tomorrow and I was wondering if you could come with us. If that’s not awkward or too short notice or-”

“Yeah, what time?” he interrupts, before she can say any more. 

“Four?” She poses it hesitantly as if the time is the question and not his presence.

“What about Will? He gonna be okay with me coming?” He finishes the sandwich and there’s really no buffer between them now, so he just acts like it’s normal, like these conversations happen every day.

She chuckles. “He drew a comic book with a superhero police chief who has a bionic hand made of a blade or something and his name is Jim Chopper. He basically sees you as his savior. He’ll be okay if you come. Besides, I think they expect it.”

He hears the emphasis on the word they, knows the people at the lab want to hold them to their silence, and his stomach flips. Also, being the kid’s hero, well, it makes him feel things too.

In the end they spend the rest of her lunch hour talking about regular things like him wondering if he should quit smoking since he’s trying to quit the pills and booze or her home repairs. 

“I can patch drywall, Hop,” she tells him, rolling her eyes. 

“It’s a little bit more than a patch considering you took a fucking ax to the wall,” he reminds her, earning another laugh.

“I’m really glad you came by, Jim,” she says after picking the crumbs off herself.

By the time she hangs up her coat in the back room of Melvald's, she realizes that her chest doesn’t hurt. She can breathe. And maybe it was only one hour out of twenty-four, but she was pretty sure she could handle each hour at a time, as it came.

“Hey kid,” he says, patting the bony shoulder of Joyce’s younger son.

“Hey Chief!” he replies. “Thanks for the pencils and stuff. I’ve been working on a comic book about a superhero and I’ve used all the colors. I ran out of red before so it was good to have a new red.”

Joyce smiles brightly at him over Will’s head and he returns the look. He’s surprised that the boy even remembers who gave him the gift last week. He had been through so much and had seemed so weak and overwhelmed. But Joyce has said he’s a thoughtful kid, that he remembers things like that. And that Hopper had made a mark.

“They tell you what this appointment is about?” he asks, mostly to Joyce but he leaves space for the boy to answer.

It’s unsettling, this appointment. Will had been in the hospital and that had seemed reasonable and normal. They treated him for hypothermia, dehydration, exposure and had him speak to a psychologist who recommended counseling if the events bothered the boy. But this appointment was at the Lab and it felt somewhat like walking straight into the lion’s den.

“Some cognitive monitoring thing and brain waves?” Joyce answers it as a question and he doesn’t blame her. None of that means anything to him either. “They mostly just wanted to see if his cognitive functioning is normal,” she shrugs.

“No pokes though,” Will chimes in. “Mom let me talk on the phone to Dr. Owens and he said they’re just monitoring me and asking questions. No blood draw.” He bobs his head, agreeing with himself.

Will reaches out and grabs Joyce’s hand as they near the front doors. Hawkins Laboratory looks different in the daylight. Hopper can’t honestly say that he likes it any better though.

Guilt is a familiar companion. For years he let it eat at him that he couldn’t save Diane or Sara. Especially Sara. He should have seen the signs sooner, should have gotten help for her more quickly. Instead of coming to terms with that being in his past, he had chosen numbness. And now, damn it all, it really hurts.

But he’s working through it.

It starts off simply. Powell mentions that he and his wife had delicious reuben sandwiches at a local cafe. He replies that there was a little hole in the wall place when he and Diane lived in New York that had the best reubens. He notices it doesn’t sting to share that memory. Might be a little tender around the edges, but it’s actually nice to have someone else who knows something about his life back then.

Flo asks if he has plans for Christmas since it’s approaching and he finds himself sharing a story from Sara’s first Christmas. She’d been crawling quite well and was a curious baby who got into everything. Wrapped presents were placed out of reach but there were still a number of times where they’d told her not to touch. When the holiday finally arrived and they set presents all around her she burst into tears, confused as to why they’d give her everything she wasn’t supposed to grab.

Then he has a rare three days off instead of just a weekend and finds himself driving before he really thinks it through. Hours later, at a payphone, he calls the one person he can think of.

“Byers’ residence!” Chirps a small voice.

“Will? That you? It’s the chief.” He can’t help but smile as soon as he hears the boy. He’s a quiet kid, but he’s sorta fierce in the way he cares deeply and wants the best for those around him. 

“Yeah, Chief. It’s me,” he replies easily. “How can I help you?” The words sound funny coming from a child, but Hopper knows he means them.

“Got a question for your mom, actually. Or a comment. Is she around?” 

“Just a moment. I can get her for you!” 

He hears the sound of the phone being set down then footsteps and a hollered Mom! Followed by Joyce’s exasperated tone even though he can’t make out the words.

“Hop? Is everything ok?” She sounds slightly out of breath and he rushes to reassure her.

“S’okay. Everything is fine. I just wanted to make sure someone knew where I was going. Y’know, since I kind of have a track record for occasionally being…unreachable.” Usually it was just getting drunk, sometimes it had been the pills, and once it had been him going all the way to Vietnam. He was determined to not be that man anymore though.

“Okay,” she says slowly, then “Hop, where are you?”

“On my way to, um, see Diane and Sara.”

There was a moment before she spoke again. “But you’re ok, right?”

“For sure ok. I wanted to try to put some things to rest. Thought I might be able to let some things go if I just…talked to them,” he finishes.

“Jim, I think that’s…brave.”

“Dunno if it’s brave or not, but I’m ready to turn over a new leaf. Don’t intend to leave them behind, but the guilt and pain, I can do without those. Anyway, I wanted someone to know so folks didn’t think I was passed out in a ditch or something,” he shrugs even though he knows she can’t see him.

“Thanks,” she chuckles softly. “I’m glad I don’t have to go searching all of Hawkins’ ditches for you when you don’t show up for lunch.”

“See you Tuesday though? On your lunch?” He sure hopes so.

“Yeah, see you then. Take care, okay?”

“You too, Joyce.”

He drives in silence most of the way. Sometimes he turns on the radio but for the most part it just doesn’t feel quite right for the situation. He finds a hotel easily, showers, and throws himself on the bed immediately falling into a dreamless sleep.

In the morning he wakes early, which he thinks will work out well in the end. He can see his girls and make it back home late, not spending another night in a hotel. He grabs coffee at a small doughnut shop and chooses a maple bar that looks big as a brick. Without any further thought, he checks out of his room, and drives to the cemetery.

Maybe he should have thought out what he wants to say, but there’s something about grief, bottled up and finally let go that can’t be scripted so as the sun rises he sits on a ratty old picnic blanket on the ground and just says what’s on his heart.

Since he can’t figure out where to start, he tells them what’s been happening.

“Saved a kid last week, Diane. Missing for just over a week and it was a nightmare. I didn’t understand what was happening, where he was…what got him. And then the not understanding almost turned into not trusting the kid’s mom when she was tryin’ to explain it all.” He pauses for a while then says. “But we saved a kid.”

He tells her he’s sorry that he couldn’t save their little girl, sorry that he didn’t notice anything wrong any sooner, sorry for any suffering that could have been avoided.

His energy is flagging when he tells Sara about Jane, El. “I think you would have liked her. She had these powers. I’m sure you’d want some sort of science explanation but I sure as hell don’t have one.” He pauses then continues, “Come on, Diane. Saying hell can’t possibly be a concern at this point. What’s language gonna do?” He chuckles to himself, imagining them sharing a laugh.

“Couldn’t save her either, in the end. Tried to get the bad guys to look somewhere else, but it didn’t buy her enough time and now she’s gone too. I’m hoping she’s out there somewhere, hiding, but I can’t say for sure. I only know she’s gone. God, I’m sorry. I would have done anything to save you, Sara.”

He knows now that there’s nothing more he could have done for his wife and daughter. He spent years thinking that there was. After that, more time passed just ignoring the fact that he couldn’t have done anything, numbing himself until he didn’t feel anything. He’s ready to let the past stay in the past. He’s ready to let himself have happy memories.

A long time later he stands and brushes off his jeans. “I’ll come back sometime,” he promises. “But you…you stay here.”

And when he walks away he feels like he leaves he feels more like himself than he has in a long time.

They’re smoking together behind Melvald’s. He’d been absolutely slammed at work after his extra day off and hadn’t come over at lunchtime. She’d been concerned. Granted, she was concerned almost all of the time, but this was a targeted, specific anxiety. Jim was quickly becoming a steady presence. But he’d shown up later in her shift, apologized, and asked if she had a short break.

“I worked straight through lunch. Sorry,” he says again. “I wasn’t keeping track. Probably should have called you or something.”

“It’s okay,” she says, slowly exhaling. “You’re here now.”

“Missed our lunch though. Missed catching up with you,” he mumbles.

“How was it? Your weekend,” she clarifies, voice soft, eyes wide.

“It was…good,” he says, sounding surprised by his own answer. “Didn’t really think about what I was doing until I was on the way there but,” he pauses. “I talked with them.”

She makes a humming noise in encouragement.

“Kinda feel like I shoulda done that a long time ago, but I was too busy ignoring things or pushing them down instead of dealing with them.”

“I meant what I said the other day, Hop. I think it was brave of you to deal with it head on,” she tells him. “Grief is just…really hard,” she finishes.

“I don’t think most people understand it,” he says in a gravely voice.

“I don’t know that most people can.”

He raises his eyebrows at her in a way that she immediately knows he’s asking for her to explain. 

“Well,” she huffs. “People understand that loss hurts. They may not care whether it does, but they understand it. But most people don’t understand that grief ebbs and flows. Or that some days it feels like suffocating darkness while others it just seems like your mind is cloudy. Sometimes it means a physical pain or that you feel sick and other times you’re just numb.”

“Yeah,” he nods his head slowly, tossing the cigarette butt to the ground and twisting his toe on it. “I think you’re right.” 

He wants to ask her how she knows all of that.

She matches his motions with her own cigarette, then, to his surprise, she places her small hand on his forearm. “I mean it, Jim. This is a big deal.”

He gently puts his hand on top of hers. “Thanks. Really.”

The woods are quiet, dark, and still. The solitude is appealing, but that’s not why he is here. He’s here because of a hope. Maybe a dream.

The kid. 

He hasn’t been able to let it go, the fact that nobody knows what happened to her. The boys seemed to think she had been defeated somehow by the domogorgon thing but they were also insistent that she beat it. He felt like she was probably gone forever since the people at the lab weren’t out looking for her anymore. It hadn’t felt quite right to just give up though.

So he came out here every few days to leave some food in a safe place and nearly every time, it was taken. He was under no allusion that it was her, Jane or El or whatever her name was. He might have been feeding a tramp for all he knew. Possibly a tricky raccoon. But some part of him thought it was her and he didn’t think that it was just wishful thinking. 

Sometimes it felt like he was being watched, but he never saw anyone. Not even a shadow. No small footprints covered the ground, though he hoped with snow approaching soon there might be. It was a presence, not ominous or foreboding, but gentle and curious.

The first few weeks he’d just left the food but now he talked too. If anybody saw him they’d think he’d lost his mind. Maybe he had, but again, he really didn’t think so.

“I hope you’re out there, kid,” he calls into the woods. “Left you the good stuff this time.” It’s crap, actually, but he knows it’s what she ate. Eggos, several stacked together and enclosed in saran wrap. Some cookies in a tupperware container. Some chocolate milk.

A moment later, her softer breaths match his. “Sorry,” she mumbles.

“S’okay,” he tells her. “You know where we’re going?”

“Sort of,” comes the reply. “It’s really similar to, um, our world? The right side? Look, you can make out landmarks.”

He does recognize things now that she points it out, but either the Upside Down is deteriorating or it’s being perversely constructed. It’s not easy to tell which.

“So we head to your place then?” She and Jonathan had said the kids’ fort, Castle Byers, was behind the house. That’s where they should go then. “Joyce?” he says again.

“Yeah?”

“I think maybe, well I know we want to find Will, to let him know we’re here, but I think we should try to fly under the radar until we’re close. I just don’t have a good feeling about this.”

All she does is nod and he barely catches the bob of her head but he clutches the giant gun they’d handed to him right outside The Gate a little closer. This place, it’s otherworldly, eerie, and saturated with an essence of darkness.

They walk quietly until Joyce lets out a yell and he gasps in surprise. The sound seems to echo around them.

“Will!”

It’s Castle Byers, or the alternate reality version of it. Torn and ravaged curtains hang across the entrance of the structure that appears to be barely standing.

“Will?!” she screams again. He wants to tell her to be quiet, to be alert, to stay on her toes but he follows her instead, on her six, keeping watch and looking for details that might lead them to the boy who is very clearly not here.

The next few repetitions of her son’s name come from her in a whimper instead of a shout and reaches out a hand to set on her shoulder. The contact seems to snap her back to reality instead of staying in despair and they both step back outside and begin to call for the boy.

She again takes the lead and he follows, heading for the Byers’ house or this perverted version of it, covered in growths and slime, broken in ways that the real version isn’t. He can feel his heart beating. It’s not much faster than usual, in spite of the intensity of the situation they’re in, but inside the hazmat suit he can hear his pulse and his breathing amplified.

Inside the house there’s fresh…blood. That’s what he supposes it is, but it seems unnatural somehow. The smell of charred flesh penetrates their protective gear and he has to guess the monster was here, hunting, and was somehow wounded.

“Will?” Joyce whispers in a puzzled tone, then, with more assurance she says, “Jonathan. Jonathan?” She turns and looks around and Hopper knows she can feel something that he can’t.

But they can’t just wait here.

“Joyce,” he says with gentle insistence. “We’ve got to keep moving.”

“Okay,” she mumbles, still looking around, trying to spot something that isn’t there. Something that might exist in another version, but certainly not this one. “Okay, let’s go.”

He takes the lead now, following the trail that the monster has left behind. It’s a testament to how dark his life has been when he doesn’t find this otherworldly setting frightening. Living has been more difficult than this, feeling has been more painful than anything a monster could inflict, depression is darker than this hazy place. At least here he and Joyce can search and fight back.

“Is there a…what are you following?” Joyce whispers from behind him as the blood trail disappears. 

“Just feels like we’re almost there,” he replies. And then he sees it. Her. Nancy Wheeler’s friend, Barbara, who supposedly drove away from everything in Hawkins and went missing. It’s like a horrifying caricature of the pictures he’s seen, bloated, coated in the slime that seems to be everywhere, mottled dark patches of skin.

He hears Joyce make a strangled noise then she rushes past him, yelling for her son. He can tell, even if he doesn’t quite understand how it works, that she feels where Will is. 

And he sees the moment that Joyce finds him, finds her son. The cry of grief, anguish, and fear that she’s too late. And a refusal to believe that he can’t be saved.

Will Byers is suspended, or more accurately held against the trunk of a tree, like a perverse cross he hangs on. A vine snakes into his mouth, down his throat. 

Joyce is there, pulling at vines, clawing, trying to free her son and for a moment Hopper is frozen, motionless. He feels too keenly what it was like to lose Sara, remembers too vividly what it was like to have her hooked up to all those machines. He ends up mobilized by her voice, talking to her son as she tries to get to him.

“God no, no. Will? Will!” she cries as she attempts to free him. “Hop, he’s not breathing. He’s not breathing!”

He’s able to reach where Joyce can’t and untangle the boy. When he lifts Will to the ground he’s struck by how small he is. “Joyce!” he barks at her and she ceases her soft cries and murmured words. “Joyce, listen to me. Listen! I need you to be able to follow my instructions, ‘kay? Tilt his head back and lift his chin when I say, yeah? Head tilt, chin lift.”

She nods but begins talking again. As Hopper performs compressions it seems as if he keeps beat to a steady “Will, Will, Will,” from Joyce. He feels like he might crush the small boy, feels like he’s too delicate to endure all that he has.

“Alright, now when I tell you, pinch his nostrils shut and breathe into his mouth. Joyce, pinch and breathe,” he says aloud while he tracks twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty internally. “Go, Joyce now!”

She breathes, he watches, then he begins compressions again feeling like a positive outcome is less and less likely but he knows there’s nothing that will be able to stop Joyce now and he honestly doesn’t feel like he could let go either.

“Come on, kid,” he mutters. “Come on.”

“It’s me, it’s me, Will. It’s your mom. Can you hear me, baby? I love you. I love you more than anything in the world. I will not leave here without you, you hear me?!”

“Joyce, breathe!” he yells at her again, and immediately starts compressions.

She’s weeping, begging her son to just breathe. “I’m not leaving here without you, baby, I won’t do it. You need to wake up, you hear me, you need to wake up!”

He remembers all too well begging his own little girl to breathe, to stay with him. He notes the tears streaking his own face when the boy finally gasps.

“That’s it, baby!” she laughs. 

He grabs the air from his suit and slips the respirator mask onto the boy’s face then he moves to crouch behind Joyce, sheltering all of them, watching their surroundings. 

As the adrenaline flags, he notices the ache in his heart. He can’t rightly call it envy or jealousy, though maybe he should, he’s not sure. But it’s something akin to feeling his own losses afresh. After his daughter’s death a scab had formed over his grief but the wound hadn’t healed at all but somehow this little boy’s resurrection has bumped into that scab causing it to fall right off. Underneath is tender skin that can’t really withstand what it’s going to be exposed to, but with time, things will be ok. And he guesses that every once in a while, when that scar gets bumped, pain will zing through him but then it will ebb away and life will proceed and he will be living it more fully with each passing day.

He doesn’t let his guard down until they’re back and Will is in a hospital, a real one, not the lab.

At the hospital Will Byers is lying in a hospital bed, looking almost comically small, surrounded by the stark white sheets and beeping machines. He’s off oxygen now and has an IV for fluids, no medications needed. While Joyce knows that he’s woken up, he is breathing on his own, and his physical recovery is anticipated to be quick, she can’t help but balk at seeing her baby hooked up to monitors and machines. It doesn’t feel right. Medicine, technology, and even search parties didn’t save her son. But she can’t help but feel heart overflowing with gratitude that they’re here and whole.

When he blinks his way to full alertness, she reaches out tenderly and puts a hand on his head to ruffle his hair. “Hey, baby.”

“Where are we?” he whispers, voice gravely with disuse.

“You’re home now,” Jonathan says. “Well, at the hospital. But you’re back. Safe.” He wipes at a tear with the back of his hand that is bandaged up, overwhelmed and relieved.

“Jonathan?”

“Yeah, it’s me buddy,” the older boy laughs.

“Are you ok?” Will asks his brother, earning more laughter from both Joyce and Jonathan. The small, fragile boy in a hospital bed asking about everyone else.

“Yeah, I’m good. This is just a cut. And everything else,” he trails off for a moment. “Everything else is perfect now you’re back.”

Their mom finds herself glad that the boys are talking because her voice has failed her and emotions are far too close to the surface. 

“Hey, we brought you some stuff so you don’t get bored,” Jonathan explains. “The doctors said you’ll be here a couple days, no longer than two or three, but I didn’t want you to just sit here with nothing to do.”

Later that day Will’s friends visit, telling him their side of the story of the past week. They’ll listen to whatever he’s willing to share, which isn’t a lot, it’s not something he wants to relive. But he fills in many of the gaps. 

Hopper brings by a sketch pad and set of new colored pencils. Joyce watches him take a breath before he enters the hospital room, as if he’s plunging into the deep end of a pool. He shows Will how to gently sharpen the pencils with his pocket knife in the absence of a pencil sharpener.

Even Donald swings by the house bringing a gallon of milk and a dozen eggs, which seems somewhat random but is oddly sweet coming from him.

Several people bring over meals, allowing Joyce to spend most of her time with her boys instead of in the kitchen. There are more people who care enough to step in than she realized.

Thanksgiving falls only a few days after Will’s discharge from the hospital and even though it makes Joyce anxious, she drops Will off at the Wheeler’s house so the boys can play. She gets Karen, who is also on edge, to promise that the children will stay inside so they can be monitored.

At home she prepares dinner for their little family. Lots of potatoes. They were inexpensive and went a long way. Turkey and dressing. A jello salad. Cornbread. It is an abundance.

It also puts her in a rather dire financial situation that she’s decided she will deal with at a later time.

With an hour left on the timer before the turkey is done, she goes to get Will.

“Jonathan!” her voice ricochets down the hallway, still not repaired from the past weeks’ destruction. “I’m going to pick up your brother.”

She doesn’t expect him to stick his head in the hallway and ask, “Can I come?”

It’s only a second she flounders before answering, “Yeah, let’s go.” She briefly considers the possibility of the house burning down in their absence, but realizes she can’t bring herself to be upset by it, particularly in light of spending these quality moments with her son.

She continues to feel her heart next to overflowing as she watches Will surrounded by his friends and Nancy sneaking a gift to Jonathan. Watching them grow continues to be her greatest source of joy. In fact, the only moment of niggling concern is Will’s uncharacteristic quiet at their dinner table later, but she chalks that up to tiredness. Her life, not fixed by any means, feels like an embarrassment of riches.

“Happy Thanksgiving, Chief,” Flo calls out to him as soon as he walks in the station.

He agreed to work, knowing that a lot of his men would want to be with their families for the holiday. Some would travel and others would host a meal at their house. He knew he’d spend the day alone and so it had made sense to offer to work. The thought of being on his own didn’t sting as much as it once had though. He is starting to realize that no longer having a wife or child doesn’t mean he has to be truly alone.

“Hey, Flo. Happy Thanksgiving! You’re working?” He’s a little bit surprised. Flo tends to have a hierarchy of priorities and her family ranks at the top.

“Mm hmm, everyone is coming for the weekend instead of today. You be ready to eat leftovers next week, Chief. I’m not going to eat turkey forever,” she tells him.

He knows she’s enjoying this, his new openness to…everything. To be frank, he is too. He’s ready.

“That’ll be good,” he tells her. “Didn’t really do much grocery shopping or cooking the past couple weeks with everything going on.”

He hasn’t really done much grocery shopping or cooking the last couple of years but that goes without saying and Flo graciously lets it slide.

“Well,” she says with a sigh, almost magically producing a pumpkin pie from somewhere and setting it to share with those who are working. “I’m sure you have a lot to get to with how busy it’s been lately. I’ll just be here answering calls and filing things, but if you get bored back there in your office you bring your work out here.”

“Thanks, Flo,” he says, then clears his throat.

If it’s possible, he’s been sleeping worse that before all of this started. Of course, he doesn’t have the same “comforts” to help him fall asleep. He’s stayed away from that. And now there are nightmares to deal with. Not every single night, but still, he’s not numb and he’s surprised by how many things he feels.

That little girl, El, she nearly broke his heart. The boys had said they’d noticed the men from the lab approaching in time to at least think of a plan. The girl had fought them and the monster from the Upside Down too. And then she’d disappeared. She had fought so hard to save Will and now she wasn’t even around to thank. He felt immense guilt for sending Brenner’s crew out to the school at all, but not knowing what happened to the child gnawed at him.

Then there was Joyce’s kid and Joyce herself. Heck, that whole family. They were barely making ends meet, she was burning the candle at both ends, and they were struggling to get back on their feet now. If you could call it being back on their feet.

And his own past had a way of reappearing as well. More frequently, he’d noticed that his dreams of Sara and Diane tended toward the happy instead of the tragic. That had to mean something, right? 

Maybe next week he would swing by Melvald’s and see if Joyce wanted to talk about any of it on her lunch break. She’d probably be back at work then, right? And it would most likely help them both to process some of the crap out loud with somebody who understood.

He sits down at his desk with that plan in his mind: get real groceries and cook some meals, get proper rest and stay away from vices, talk about recent events and not let things fester. He feels satisfied in a way he hasn’t in a long time.

“Anyway,” Mike stretches out each syllable. “Whenever she uses her powers, she gets weak. So like right now, she looked for Will and Barbara and that sucked up her energy. She’ll need time to recover.”

“Yep, The more energy she uses, the more tired she gets,” Dustin nods.

Lucas, who hasn’t said a lot so far, finally chimes in. “And remember, she flipped a car earlier.”

“It was awesome!” interjects Dustin.

“But she’s drained. Like a bad battery.”

“How,” begins Joyce, then gives her head a little shake and starts over. “Then how do we make her better?”

Jim notices that she’s subtly rocking the girl, almost as if she’s a baby. But instead of just looking scared and tired, Jane, or El as the kids are calling her, looks at peace in Joyce’s arms. Come to think of it, Joyce looks more grounded too, as if having someone to take care of keeps her in the moment.

“There’s not really anything that we can do. We just have to wait, like, until she recharges or whatever,” Dustin supplies.

An awkward silence follows as if they’re waiting for El to suddenly jump up and be ready to find Will…however she’s going to do that.

Strangely, it is El who speaks next though. A single word. “Bath.”

“What’s that, baby?” Joyce asks her.

El tilts her head to look at Joyce. “I can find them. I will find them in the bath.”

“The…” begins Joyce but then her gaze flashes to Hopper. “The tanks. Sensory deprivation tanks.”

He crouches so he’s on the girl’s level and asks her, “If we get you a tank, you think you can do it then? The thing where you…find Will in that place?”

“Yes,” she whispers, nodding.

“Ok, ok we can do that,” Mike says.

“Seriously?” Lucas scowls. “Are you telling me you know how to set up or build or whatever a sensory deprivation tank?”

“Oh, no. No, I don’t know,” Mike's face falls.

“Jim?” Joyce asks, hope tinges the edges of her voice, El sitting up straight in her lap now, looking at him hopefully too.

“Hell if I know,” Hopper mutters, rubbing a hand over his head.

“Mr. Clarke would know,” Dustin chimes in.

“Great,” says Hopper. “It’s late. Let’s-”

“Call him,” says Joyce. “Call him now. If he won’t talk with you then I’ll speak with him. I don’t care if he thinks I’m crazy, it’s what we need to do.”

“I’ll do it,” Dustin offers. “Can I use your phone?”

Joyce shrugs and watches him walk away while Hopper stands where he can see what the boy is doing, listening in.

He can only hear half of the conversation but Hopper actually laughs when Dustin raises his voice and asks “Why are you keeping this curiosity door locked?”

Only a few minutes pass before Dustin returns to the group. El is cautiously eating celery sticks and peanut butter that Joyce has placed in front of her on a plate but nobody else seems hungry, at least not for a healthy snack at any rate.

“Mrs. Byers? Do you still have that kiddie pool? The one we bobbed for apples in?”

“Uh huh,” she nods. “I- I think so.”

“Okay. Good. Then we just need salt. Lots of salt.”

“What’s ‘lots’ mean, kid?”

Dustin looks skyward and his mouth moves silently, he seems to be ticking things off on his fingers and it takes a moment before the words “Fifteen hundred pounds” come out of his mouth.

Nancy speaks first, possibly because she’s so willing to critique her brother’s friend, but also because she has a very valid point. It’s likely everyone is thinking the same thought. “Where are we going to get our hands on that much salt?”

“No, no I think I got this,” Hopper begins. “The schools, they’ve got salt.”

“What if it snows this week?” Jonathan asks.

“Snow day?” Hopper shrugs, a hint of a smile on his face. Jonathan bites back a laugh.

Jim had wanted to leave the teens behind, but Joyce had insisted on everyone staying together. He’d also suggested sending the boys home, but she hadn’t even dignified that suggestion with a response. So now they were all in Hopper’s Blazer driving over to the school. A blessedly short drive.

He should have suggested that some of the kids walk to meet them there. Glancing to the passenger seat he doesn’t even have to make eye contact to know that Joyce wouldn’t have gone for that either. He sighs.

When they arrive at the school, kids spill out of the vehicle like ants from an anthill. Immediately everyone peels off and starts their assigned tasks. He has to give ‘em a little bit of credit for that. They all are trying to be helpful, they’re all working together and following the plan. And even though he knows the time is passing– he feels like a stopwatch is running and they’re up against the clock– things seem to be falling into place quickly.

The kids want their friend back and they’re willing to fight for that to happen. They’ve set up the pool, poured salt, checked the salinity, buoyancy, and temperature. Without him even noticing, Joyce grabbed a change of clothes for El and several towels.

He’s loading a wheelbarrow full of salt with Jonathan when the kid asks him a question.

“If we find where Will is,” he pauses. “When we find where he is, what are we going to do about the…monster thing?”

“First of all,” he grunts, tossing a sack of salt. “‘We’ don’t do anything. You’re getting nowhere near this.”

Jonathan begins to say something and Hopper fights the urge to just fight back, but he makes sure to answer gently instead of out of frustration.

“Look kid,” he keeps his voice low. “Your mom has been through enough. You heard her earlier, this isn’t your battle to fight and she needs you. She needs for nothing to happen to you too.”

“But my brother-”

“I know you don’t have any reason to trust me, but your mom and I go way back and,” he tries to explain. He knows it will fall short. The kid is smart. If Hopper was truly willing to go to any length for Joyce, where had he been all these years? For some reason he can’t shake the feeling that he’s gonna have to tell Jonathan something if he’s going to gain any trust at all.

He looks away when he says it. “I lost a kid. My daughter. And it broke me. I haven’t been myself for years now, haven’t been able to see anybody else’s pain or suffering but my own, but Will going missing? Your mom fighting to find him? Something about that woke me up. So yeah, I maybe should have done something before now, before this, and I didn’t. And I’m sorry for that, kid. Sorry to you and your mom. But I promise that now I am going to find your brother.”

He doesn’t look at Joyce’s son because maybe that was too much to tell a kid. Maybe it was just too much to say out loud. But it’s a relief to say it all, especially when he knows the kid is basically a vault when it comes to sharing.

“That’s a pretty bold promise,” Jonathan mutters, but he leaves it at that and continues to work.

When they return to the gym where they’re working on the tank, Hopper scans the room. Nancy is sticking close to her brother as if she’s worried she’ll lose track of him if he’s out of her sight. The boys have almost finished their work. El stands just behind Joyce, like a small shadow.

“Ready,” Dustin says. “We’re ready.”

Silence falls and, with nothing else for their hands to do, the tension builds. 

Finally Joyce hands El a pair of what looks like safety goggles covered in duct tape, he assumes to block out any light in the already dim room. He hears her say something he knows it must kill her to say, but she does it anyway.

“Sweetie, you don’t have to do this,” she whispers, her hands on the girl’s bony shoulders.

“I will find him,” is all she replies.

Joyce’s lip quivers and she puts her hand on El’s cheek, earning her a confused look, but the child doesn’t shy away. “You’re so very brave, you know that, right?” She waits for El to nod before continuing. “I’ll be right here. The whole time, I’ll be with you. If it ever gets too scary you let me know. Let me know, ok?”

“Yes,” whispers El.

“Are you ready then?” Joyce holds out her hand and El clamps on, stepping into the pool and lowering herself into the water.

They all seem to narrow in then, their focus on the girl in the pool and physically as they surround her as if to guard her from things they can’t see. Hopper and Jonathan flank Joyce, offering her support as well as keeping watch.

El floats and it seems like each one of them holds their breath. The lights flicker and dim. Suddenly El shudders.

“Barb?” she whimpers. “Barbara?”

Nancy chimes in after a moment passes silently. “Did you find her? Is she okay?”

So soft they can barely hear she replies, “Gone.” 

Nancy clamps her hand over her mouth and tears fill her eyes. More lights go out and El begins to thrash in the water. “Gone,” she says again, louder this time. “Gone, gone!” she cries, clearly distressed.

It’s all Hopper can do to keep Joyce from jumping into the pool. She snatches the child’s hand and clutches it then looks at him and he reaches for her other small hand.

“I’m here, right here with you. I’m here, baby, don’t be afraid,” she murmurs.

He can’t tell what the girl can hear through the water but between the hands she’s holding and the words Joyce continues to speak, it seems to be enough. 

Jonathan is standing with clasped hands in front of his face as if in prayer when El speaks again.

“Castle,” she begins. “Castle Byers.”

Joyce and her son share a knowing look.

“Will?”

“Is he there?” Joyce dares ask.

“Will,” is the only answer.

“Tell him we’re coming. Tell him Mom is coming.” Joyce bites her lip as she waits.

The supercomm crackles to life and Will’s voice can be heard, clearly, for the first time in days.

“Hurry.”

“Tell him, please, tell him to hold on. Mom is coming, hold on a little longer!” She begs El to relay the message.

Everything else seems to happen at once. The lights come on, blindingly bright after the dimness. El splashes upright with a loud gasp, nose bleeding. She begins to cry and the adults, still holding her hands, pull her to the edge of the pool where she’s wrapped in a soft towel. Joyce is whispering gently to the girl as she holds her close and Jonathan reaches down and gives the younger child’s shoulder a tender squeeze.

She truly is a tiny little thing and Jim has no trouble carrying her over to the bleachers where she sits, all swaddled in towels, with the other kids. He then pulls Joyce and her son aside.

“This castle, where is it?” he queries.

“Behind the house,” Jonathan answers quickly. “We built it. It’s like a fort thing. He goes there to feel safe, to hide-”

Hopper is already striding toward the door. Immediately they follow.

“Stay here,” he demands.

“He’s right,” Joyce says to her older son. “You have to stay here. I need you safe. And they need someone to watch out for them.”

“No way,” both Hopper and Jonathan say, then glare at one another.

“You’re staying too,” he points at Joyce with a scowl.

“Like hell I am!” she yells. “He’s my son, Hop! My son!”

He knows this is a battle he’s not going to win. Knew it before he even began to argue it. He sighs.

“I do need you safe, Jonathan. You’re my son too and I have to know that you’re safe,” she stares at him and he looks away, clearly angry.

“Fine. Whatever.”

He’s mad, but he doesn’t pull away when she grabs him for a hug.

“Joyce, let’s go,” the chief grunts at her.

“Stay safe, Jonathan,” she insists.

“Let’s go,” he demands, holding her elbow, careful not to grab or pull, knowing it will stress her even more.

“What’s your plan?” Joyce asks him, eyes shining in the darkness as he drives.

He waits a moment before saying “Hawkins Lab.”

“That’s it? That’s the plan?”

He does not need to see her face to imagine exactly the expression that must be painted across it.

“Hey, it worked before,” he retorts.

“Did it?”

“If you don’t want to do this, if you have another plan, tell me now. Because you don’t have to come in there with me. And if you think there’s another way, a better way, have at it.”

“No,” she whispers, clearly frustrated.

“I’m gonna need you to trust me in there then.”

There’s an awkward pause and then, “Joyce?”

“I nodded, okay?”

“Yeah,” he makes a noise. “I couldn’t hear that, your head nodding.”

She huffs and they sit silently until he turns off the road onto the gravel perimeter.

“I trust you, Jim,” she finally says. “Always have.”

“Sorry,” he whispers, embarrassed that he demanded allegiance from her in that way instead of trusting her the way he was expecting her to trust him.

They’d had each other's backs since childhood, but life had gotten in the way and he really didn’t know where they stood, if that trust still existed just untried for years or if he’d destroyed it along the way.

“S’okay,” she whispers back.

They go through the fence in nearly the same spot as Hopper did days before. Instead of making it into the facility though, they’re stopped near the door. 

He really does have a plan. He just hopes that it works.

She is so overcome by rage that she doesn’t even begin to feel fearful. And she should be afraid. These are the people who performed experiments on Terry Ives. They are the ones who imprisoned Jane, El, for close to a decade. They’re the reason Will is in the Upside Down with the monsters.

She screams. She yanks at her hands, cuffed to the chair. She sees stars at the edges of her vision.

But they don’t know her or the lengths she will go through to get her son back. They have no clue.

The tall man enters, the doctor. Brenner. She recognizes him from articles that Jim has shown her, from the pictures they saw at Terry and Becky’s.

He sits across from her, almost serenely. She wants to spit in his face, to kick him. More. Worse.

“Your son. We know you’ve been in contact with him.”

She almost expects him to sound villainous, like a character in a movie, but he’s just a man. Just another man wreaking havoc in their lives again.

“Where’s Hopper?” she fires back, obstinately.

“When and how did you first make contact?” he continues to press.

“Where is he?” She’s not going to drop it.

“Six.”

“What?” She hates that she asks, but she can’t help herself.

“Six people were taken in the past week,” he explains. “This…thing that took your son. We don’t understand it. But its behavior is predictable. Like any other animal, it feeds. It will take more sons, more daughters. I want to save them. I want to save your son. But I can’t do it -- not if I don’t understand it. Not without your help.”

She glares at him. The audacity to lie to her face, over and over. Oh, she doesn’t doubt that he regrets this monster or how it has come into their world. But that he feels remorse? No. He’s upset that his science project has gotten messy.

“My help?” she whispers in disbelief. “You take my boy away from me, you leave him in that place to die, you fake his death -- we had his funeral -- and now, now you want my help?”

He sits stonily, waiting.

“Go to hell,” she tells him.

They shock him again and it feels worse than at the police academy. Maybe it’s because he’s not the picture of health. More likely because they’re not using a conventional taser device but something stronger and more…illegal.

He sinks to the floor, sweating, gasping for breath.

“What do you know?” The guard demands. Again.

He doesn’t care what they do to him. He’s weathered worse. “Did I stutter? I told you everything,” he spits back.

He doesn’t even see the guard move but he feels every muscle in his body spasm. He doubles over and feels bile rise in his throat. 

“What do you know?” Same question, different person asking. The woman this time.

Hopper looks back up with defiance and wipes his mouth. “I know you experiment on kidnapped little kids whose parents’ brains you turned to mush. I know you took things too far and messed up in a big way, I mean you really messed up big time, didn’t you?” He knows he’s asking for more abuse at their hands with this, but he pushes anyway. “And I know you’ve been trying to clean up your mess, killing Benny Hammond, faking Will Byers’ death, making it look like that girl ran off. Like I said, everything.”

“Who have you been working with?”

Ah, now that’s the question, isn’t it? That’s his one piece of leverage in all of this. If he and Joyce are the only ones who know all the facts, they’ll be easy enough to get rid of. But if someone else knows…

“No one. But I gave it all up to my buddy at the Times. He’s gonna blow this whole thing wide open–”

The shock stops him, but in spite of that he feels satisfaction because he’s holding a bit of control they can’t let slide.

“You’re just a junky,” teases the guard. “A small-town cop who had a really bad week who took one too many pills this time.”

He yanks Hopper upright and shoves him into a chair. Opening a case to reveal a large syringe and a small glass bottle filled with liquid hHe begins to fill the syringe.

“It was a mistake coming back here,” the woman says.

“No. It really wasn’t,” he says evenly. “Because you can’t let this information get out. It will spoil everything. So you’re going to let me and Joyce go. You’re going to give us anything we need. We’re going to find her kid and bring him back. And then,” he pauses and stares directly at the woman. He can see her shift uneasily. “Then we’re all going to forget any of this ever happened.”

“Clearly he needs time to think about the situation he’s in,” the woman says. “Let’s go.” She and the guard leave him there. 

He waits alone until Brenner comes in.

“Where is she?” he demands as the chief sits, impassive.

“No,” says Hopper, simply.

“I know you know where she is,” Brenner states.

“I need your word. Will, we get him back. The kids– those boys– you leave them alone. You guarantee me that and I will have my friend not publish this, not share everything. But why should I tell you where your little science experiment is? Especially when she can close this rift, this gate, trapping Will?”

“Tell me where she is.”

“No,” he says, yet again. “Too many of us know things now.”

Brenner leans in. “Eleven’s location and we let you all live.”

His mind scrambles. He can’t lie, at least not blatantly, but betraying the girl doesn’t sit right either. Exhaling softly he asks, “Your word?”

Brenner holds out a hand that Jim shakes, hating every second, knowing that he can’t trust anything to hold.

“The elementary school,” he says, reluctantly. “We used a chest freezer in the kitchen as a sensory deprivation tank.”

It’s near enough the truth that he doubts Brenner and his crew will retaliate, but just inexact enough that it might give the kid a chance to run.

Words to describe her anger don’t exist. She slams her foot against the table leg just to have a way to express it. She’s surprised when Jim walks through the door, followed closely by two guards.

“Let’s go,” he says as they release her from the handcuffs.

“I don’t understand,” she begins.

“Let’s go, Joyce,” he insists, more gruffly this time. He turns and stalks out. She follows.

But now instead of feeling incandescent rage, she is filled with fear. What just happened? Where was her son?

“We came to an understanding.” It’s all Jim says. 

“But I don’t-”

“Everything that happened here, anything that happens from here on out, we don’t talk about it. You want to save Will? This place? It had nothing to do with it. That’s the deal. You understand?”

He finally looks at her and it’s all she can do to nod. She wonders what it took to get even this.

They’re led down into the bowels of the lab and handed hazmat suits.

It’s almost too simple. They’ve fought to find this place, for access to it. And now they walk right in.

“Why,” she turns and stares up in Callahan’s face. “Is he handcuffed?” She speaks slowly, as if to a small child or maybe to someone whose first language is not English.

Hopper cringes and steps back.

“Your boy assaulted an officer, that’s why h-”

“Take them off.” It’s said quietly, but her voice is filled with contempt and though her hands are at her sides, she is pointing, punctuating each word.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that, Ms. Byers,” he tries to explain.

“Take them off!”

Callahan looks first to Powell then Hopper and avoids Joyce entirely, but Hopper is the next to chime in.

“You heard her. Take ‘em off.”

Jonathan stays seated even after Callahan uncuffs him, avoiding eye contact.

“Chief, you can do what you want here,” he gestures to Jonathan. “But there’s something you really should see.”

Jonathan is acting like he wishes he could disappear, despite the emotional turmoil that would cause his mother. Nancy Wheeler, unnoticed by both Hopper and Joyce until now, is looking at the wall as if she’s found something fascinating to observe. Powell brings in a rucksack that makes a metallic clunk when placed on the desk.

A gun, bullets, a couple of hammers, knives wrapped up in an old tea towel–everyone can see Joyce take note of that detail– and a bear trap.

“What is this?” It’s too much, is what it is. 

“Ask your son,” Callahan tells her.  “We found it when we picked him up.”

Joyce looks rattled. More rattled if that’s possible. Hopper hates that there doesn’t seem to be a single thing he can shelter her from.

“Jonathan, what is this? What is this?” 

“Why are you going through my stuff?” the teen asks.

“Hey,” Hopper barks at him. “Does that seem like the right question to ask right now?” For a moment everyone is silent. He takes advantage of that by taking a deep breath. One breath is probably all he has time for. “We need to talk. My office. Right now.”

She remembers the time in high school that she and Jim got picked up by Chief Jim Hopper Sr. She’s pretty sure Jim would remember it differently than she did, but her one and only fear was her own dad, not the police. They’d been at a party with lots of friends from school, lots of alcohol, no adults and possibly a small amount of drugs. A deputy had recognized Jim and had put both of them in the back seat, then when Big Jim came along, they went straight int0 the back of his cruiser. 

Her mind thinks through all of this in seconds flat because she recognizes the look on Jonathan’s face. The scariest thing in her life had been her own father, now it’s the monsters responsible for her youngest’s disappearance. And she’s sure those are Jonathan’s biggest fears as well.

“Time to talk, kid.” Hopper says, arms crossed.

Her son hesitates before stating defiantly. “You won’t believe me.”

The chief sighs, unfolds his arms, and sits down so he’s level with Jonathan. “Gimme a try.”

Joyce’s heart stutters again because even though she knows her son isn’t scared of the chief, she also knows he doesn’t trust Jim. And that’s on her. The men in her life, and by default his, haven’t been worth trusting.

Unless you trusted that without fail they would hurt you or neglect you.

For Jonathan the only consistent male figures in his life were maybe a handful of teachers, if you used your imagination you could say Donald Melvald was there, and obviously Lonnie. But teachers were only there for a year and never outside of school. Donald was her employer, but Jonathan knew that Donald took advantage of how much she needed a paycheck and looked the other way when she came in bruised, hungry, or scared. And Lonnie didn’t need an explanation.

And in spite of that, Jonathan looks to Nancy and mutters, “Show him.”

The girl fishes a blurry photograph out of her pocket and unfolds it, sliding it over to Hopper. He raises his eyebrows and looks in Joyce’s direction, tilting it so she can see. She quickly looks away, recognizing the thing immediately.

“And you think what exactly? Are you…” Hopper pauses, searching for the right word. “Hunting this thing?”

“It’s what got Will,” Jonathan shrugs. “And Barb.”

“So…yes.” Hopper takes a deep breath while Joyce’s become shallower. “Hey,” he whispers in Joyce’s direction, making eye contact to hopefully snap her out of it.

“We think that it’s drawn by, um, blood.” Jonathan is avoiding looking at his mom, but he keeps talking. “We’ve seen it. More than once.”

Hopper makes a noise of frustration then barks out, “You!” pointing at Nancy. “You’re gonna wait outside.”

“Oh, okay,” she says, backing out of the room with a tiny wave goodbye.

“I’m gonna,” the chief pauses and looks around. “Get a cup of coffee. Wait here.”

He leaves the two of them, Joyce and her son. 

They sit silently for a moment, Joyce measuring her breathing and Jonathan avoiding looking at her.

“Look, Mom,” he mutters. “I’m sorry.”

“You’re-” her voice breaks on that one word alone and she starts over. “You’re sorry?”

“It’s just, I thought I could save him,” he whispers. “I still do.”

“Jonathan, you lied to me about where you were, you-”

“I know, Mom! But-”

“Stop!” She stands at her full height, eyes blazing, but not in anger. She’s scared. “Just stop and listen. You lied to me about where you were while you were actively putting yourself and Nancy in danger. You risked your life!”

She turns away and looks skyward, closing her eyes and taking a breath.

“I said I was sorry, Mom. And I am.”

“This,” she waves her hand around and looks directly at him. “Is not on you. This is not yours alone to fix, not yours alone to carry.” And she sighs, because she knows why he feels like he has to deal with this on his own. “I’ve failed you so many times.”

“Mom, it’s not your fault.”

“No, it really is. I put too much on your shoulders so many times. That or I sweep it under the rug and pretend like as long as I can bear it, you won’t see it. But this is not on you to fix. Damnit Jonathan!” Her voice quivers.

She reaches out and he barrels into her embrace, voice muffled when he says “I really am sorry, Mom. I love you and I want to fix it for you, for us.”

“I love you, baby,” she whispers back, like she did when he was little, like she wants to forever, for as long as she can keep him safe. “I won’t lose you too.”

There are raised voices and the chief really doesn’t want to deal with whatever it is. He’d rather sit and drink his mug of coffee, bitter grounds at the bottom and all. He’d much rather peek in and see if Joyce and her son have resolved anything. Not that it’s any of his business.

The Wheeler girl, Nancy, is there sitting in a chair in the corner as far away from the situation as she can physically be, watching quietly as a woman who stands with a child he assumes is her son unleashes a barrage of angry words at Callahan and Powell.

“I expect an apology!” 

The shrill voice rankles Hopper, grating on his nerves.

Callahan is attempting to placate the woman and it’s not going over well. Hopper sighs, rubbing a hand over his face, then he presses his lips together and marches toward the chaos.

“What’s going on?” He punches out each word emphatically, hoping to exude some sort of authority or sense of control over things.

“These men,” she points at the two officers. “Are humiliating my son!”

“Hey now, that’s not–” begins Callahan at the same time Powell explains, “There was a fight–”

“No! A psychotic child broke my son’s arm!” insists the woman, gesturing to her son who, to Hopper’s eye, doesn’t actually appear to be much distressed by the situation. The look on his face is more akin to guilt than pain.

“Ok, so a little girl,” Callahan says, tone dripping with sarcasm.

“Oh, that tone,” she shoots back.

“Okay, that’s enough!” Hopper’s voice is louder than he’d like, but he can’t figure out how else to be heard over the din. “I don’t have time for this. Take a statement,” he says, then mouths silently to Powell, “Then get them out!”

The chief heads back to his office, first making a jerking motion with his head to Nancy who immediately rises and follows him. They’re about to walk away when he hears the conversation that Powell and Callahan are taking down.

“She’s a freak. No hair, well, really short,” the kid describes.

“What’d you say?” Hopper asks, gruffly.

“She’s a freak?”

“No, not that,” he waves his hand as if sweeping something from the air.

“She doesn’t have any hair?” the kid tries again. “She doesn’t even look like a girl. Her head is shaved, it’s weird and…”

“And what, kid?” Hadn’t he just said he didn’t have time for this?

“She can do things,” he shrugs.

Hopper barely suppresses an eye roll. “I’m gonna need more than that.”

The woman nudges her son and he mumbles an answer.

“She can…make you fly or…piss yourself.”

Powell and Callahan exchange looks ranging from entertained to tired of this waste of time, but Jim signals them to just hold on.

“Was she by herself?” Could Will be with her? He thinks that would be too easy, but it’s possible. Even more likely is that the girl, Jane, could be the way they find him.

The boy shakes his head. No. “She’s always with those losers,” he spits the words out bitterly. “Wheeler, Henderson, sometimes Sinclair.”

“‘Kay, thanks,” Hopper spins on his heel and nudges Nancy in front of him down the hallway to his office, slamming the door shut.

“Here’s what we’re gonna do.” He starts to lay out a plan to Joyce and the teens, step by step, beginning with a stop at the Wheeler’s house.

Nancy is panicking.

“I have to go. I have to be with them,” she insists, voice a mixture of a pathetic whine with a hint of both fear and determination.

“Sweetie, you can’t,” Joyce’s eyes are wide and sad, wanting to spare the kids from any more danger or sorrow, knowing that the children she wants to shelter already know far more than she initially suspected.

They’re squished in Joyce’s car which she initially thought was a good idea because it was convenient and she could keep Jonathan and Nancy close by, but now she’s rethinking this. You can practically feel everyone’s emotions. She cracks the window a tiny bit in spite of the cold November air.

“Look!” Nancy’s arm reaches between Joyce and Hopper, pointing in the distance to her house that is crawling with officials. “Officials” who work on the project, or Jane and maybe Will, at Hawkins Lab.

Uniformed officers are sweeping in and out of the house carrying boxes and clipboards, talking to each other and on radios. Lights are flashing. Vehicles are marked with the logos of various organizations and some are unmarked, undercover. 

“My mom and dad are there. Holly is there. Maybe Mike too,” she insists. “It’s not right to just sit here!”

“You can’t go kid,” Hopper twists, as much as he can, to look at her in the back seat. “Just because you can’t go doesn’t mean you aren’t doin’ anything.”

There’s a momentary staredown between the two of them but the chief speaks again. “Look there,” he points. “Not gonna help anyone getting mixed up in that. Besides,” he points again, this time off in the distance at a chinook helicopter. “I don’t think they’ve found your brother yet, ‘specially if he’s with that girl.”

“I don’t understand,” she scrunches up her nose.

“Just buckle up,” Hopper barks, eliciting scowls from everyone else in the car. “We need to find them before anyone else does. Do you know where he might have gone?”

“Who?” Nancy whips her gaze from her house back to Hoper.

“Your brother. Where would he go? If he had to hide, if he was trying to avoid being seen?”

“I don’t know,” she replies, eyes wide.

“I need you to think.” Hopper pushes and Joyce puts her hand on his arm, signaling to him to stay calm.

“Does he have any other friends,” Joyce chimes in. “Or places he hides, like Will and his castle?”

“We don’t really talk,” the teen explains. “Especially not lately.”

“I might know.”

Hopper notices Jonathan’s comment right away but Joyce and Nancy take a beat to really hear what he’s telling them just because they don’t expect him to chime in.

“What’re you thinkin’ kid?”

“I don’t know where Mike is, where they are, but I have an idea about how we can ask him.”

Recognition flashes across Joyce’s face as her son explains his idea and they head immediately toward their home instead. The car ride is not long, but those same emotions that were high to begin with haven’t dissipated at all. Everyone is still on-edge, tired, and uncertain how to proceed. But at least they aren’t just sitting and waiting, Joyce doesn’t think she could take any more of that.

Hopper has barely put the car in park before they’re scrambling out. Joyce barely even registers the disarray when they barge inside. The Christmas lights and lamps, the torn wallpaper, the boarded-over hole in the wall, it’s all just been a part of finding her son. Even Hopper barely gives it another glance. But Nancy stumbles to a stop just inside the door and Jonathan bumps into her.

“What-” she stammers. “What happened?”

Jonathan grabs her hand and pulls her toward Will’s room where Joyce and Hopper are already scrambling around.

“I don’t see it,” Jonathan says as he digs around on Will’s desk, looking under his art supplies and drawings. “It has to be here.”

Joyce drops to her knees and reaches under the bed, sweeping her arm around, pulling some laundry out and then plunging back in.

“Here!” She pulls Will’s supercomm out, victorious. “Got it.”

Nancy holds her hand out and Joyce passes it to the teen as if it’s a sacred object, the one thing that connects them all. “Mike,” Nancy speaks succinctly. “If you’re there, I need you to answer.”

A long awkward pause follows as they collectively hold breaths and wait.

“Mike, this is an actual emergency. Do you copy?”

Nancy shrugs and Hopper snatches the device from her, “Hey kid, it’s the chief. We know you’re not safe. We know about the girl. We can help. We can protect you. But you need to pick up if you’re there. Do you copy? Over.”

Joyce is wringing her hands now while Jonathan, Nancy, and Hopper stare at the supercomm, willing Mike to answer.

She still can’t feel him like she could and that scares her. It terrifies her actually. But right now they’re doing something and that seems better than nothing, obviously. Also, if she’d doing something there’s less space for the doubts and questions to creep in. So she internally wills Mike Wheeler to answer, prays to whoever is listening that the girl will be with him, banks everything in her on the possibility that finding Jane means finding Will. Because it has to. She won’t accept any alternative.

When the boy’s voice crackles over the walkie she barely registers that her knees were locked until she feels Jim at one elbow and Jonathan at her other, keeping her steady.

“It’s Mike. I’m here.”

It’s the waiting again. She’s sure it isn’t all that long, truly. At first Jonathan and Nancy chat. They’ve known one another their whole lives but have never been close, so it is interesting to hear them talking about things they both know but have different perspectives on. Slowly the conversation deepens though, to more serious things, until Nancy finally ventures out of more comfortable territory into the more awkward.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Byers,” she blurts.

“Joyce, honey. Joyce is fine,” she says then, with furrowed brow asks. “About what?”

“Well,” she pauses. “Everything, really. About Will going missing. Mostly that I didn’t tell you that day though.”

Joyce exhales softly then repeats, “What?”

Nancy isn’t looking at her, but her voice is clear as she explains. “That day I came looking for Jonathan. I knew about the thing in your wall. Not that it was here,” she clarifies. “But I knew it was out there, that it existed. Maybe, if I had trusted you with that sooner, you would have been able to find Will sooner.”

A guilty look is on Jonathan’s face now as he thinks back to what he could have entrusted to his mom, dwelling on their conversation at the police station earlier. 

So when Joyce speaks, she is talking to both of them.

“It’s not your fault.” She almost leaves it at that but there’s more that she particularly wants Jonathan to hear. “Way too often I’m not here to listen and more often than that, I make you kids,” her voice wobbles a bit and she looks at her son. “I make you kids take on too much, make you think it is all yours to figure out. But I’m here now.”

She wants to say she she’ll always be here to listen, she’ll never be unavailable to solve a problem, that they’re able to share anything with her. But she knows it will take work to make her relationship with her son into what she hopes it can be. Jonathan isn’t distrustful or distant, he genuinely believes the best about her. But he knows her flaws, traumas, and past and that does drive a wedge between them, like it or not.

“Mom, it’s not really your fault either. I know you think it is, but it’s really not.”

She quickly swipes a knuckle under her nose before looking at him with a sniffle.

“We can all do better. We will, right?” he asks.

It’s then that headlights shine through the front window and the three of them rise, listening closely. Joyce ventures to the door and then immediately heads out followed by the teens.

Hopper is pulling up in the Blazer, car loaded with kids, including a little girl with short, dark hair and chocolate brown eyes. Her movements are guarded and her eyes are filled with unease, but she sticks close to the other kids as Nancy hugs Mike and they all come back inside.

Hopper is rubbing at his temples again and Joyce manages to walk beside him. “Are you ok? Headache?” she asks him.

“It’s not bad,” he mumbles. “Just tired and that Wheeler kid, Karen and Ted’s boy…”

“I know,” she says dryly. “He’s the perfect combination of them in the worst possible ways.” She laughs softly. “I’ll find you something for your head when we get inside.”

He reaches out and puts his hand on the small of her back as they go through the doorway and he stops to shut and lock it behind them.

“Go, kid,” Hopper says, nodding at the Henderson boy. While Jim takes the pills and glass of water Joyce silently hands to him, Dustin Henderson snatches a piece of paper from Mike Wheeler and spreads it out in front of them all.

“Okay, so, in this scenario, we’re the acrobat,” he points to the drawing of a stick figure on a line. “Will and Barbara -- and that monster, they’re this flea. And this is the Upside Down where Will is hiding. Mr. Clarke said the only way to access this place would be through a rip in time and space.”

The questions begin almost immediately.

“Mr. Clarke?” Joyce asks, knowing the teacher but wondering why and how he was involved.

“The rip? Like a…gate?” Hopper says at nearly the same time.

“The Gate, yeah, has a strong electromagnetic field, and that changes the directions of the compass’ needle,” Dustin goes on, barely acknowledging the interruptions.

“This Gate, is it underground? Near a large tank?” The chief looks to the girl, Eleven, when he asks that.

She nods then quietly answers in the affirmative.

“How did you know that?” Dustin asks.

“Because he’s… he’s actually seen it. Right?” Mike asks.

Hopper nods solemnly.

There’s a pregnant pause and finally Joyce moves toward the little girl, making sure she’s on the child’s level when she speaks.

“Sweetie, we need to know where Will, my son, is. Can you find him again? Talk to him? Inside that-”

“The Upside Down?” 

The girl’s speech sounds almost toddler-like and Joyce finds the whole situation heartbreaking. The child was raised in a lab, as an experiment.

“Yes. The…Upside Down,” Joyce nods. 

The girl watches Joyce, studies the look on her face. Her mouth opens slowly when Joyce gently puts her hands over the child’s. And then the girl nods.

“And my friend, Barbara? Can you find her too?” Nancy chimes in.

The boys explain how El, that’s what they call her, has “found” Will before, helping find a blindfold and turning the stereo to static. 

El holds so still that the rest of them nearly hold their breaths. The lights flicker, the girl whispers something under her breath, but soon enough she whips off the blindfold and looking at Joyce, says the words Joyce dreads.

“I’m sorry. I can not find him.”

Empty words and empty promises.

Futile acts and waiting around doing nothing.

Upended plans and the inability to proceed with others.

The last twenty-four hours seem like some of the longest in Jim Hopper’s life and part of him wonders why. His best guess is that even in his worst moments, those with the most pain, times of insurmountable grief, he was alone.

Being alone is a unique pain.

But watching Joyce and her son experience these things stabs at his heart in a way he’s never known before. Even meeting Terry Ives and seeing who she is now had crushed him in a way he didn’t expect. Seeing Jane, or El, and hearing her small voice had him feeling a sense of urgency. His brain was screaming at him to fix this now so that Will didn't grow up in a dark, lonely place like Jane grew up in a sterile, loveless one.

He sits down at the kitchen table across from where she’s now settled and slides a plate to her.

“So,” he begins, taking a bite. “Told you last night about the morgue, but didn’t really get to the lab.”

She raises an eyebrow in question and he continues.

“Well, I sort of broke into Hawkins Lab. See if I could find anything,” he shrugs.

“Jesus, Hop,” she exhales. “Wha-, how?”

“‘At’s not important,” he waves off her question. “I just wanna make sure I tell you everything.

“So, I broke into the lab, got into the secured areas. There’s rooms for occupants. It was like a mental institution. A prison almost. They had all these machines and observation areas. Matches up with everything Powell and I found the other day in old articles and stuff at the library. They were definitely doing research on human subjects.”

Joyce’s fork hovers in front of her mouth, brow furrowed.

“It’s empty now,” he says. “Well, not empty but there’s no patients or inmates or whatever you’d call them. But Joyce, one of the rooms belonged to a kid.”

“What do you mean? How do you know?” Her voice sounds gravely and he wonders if it’s from sleep or because she’s emotional about the thought of a child being held there. He wouldn't blame her if it was that. It bothers him too.

“On the bed, there was a stuffed animal. On the wall, a drawing.” He’s using his hands to talk now, pointing as if they’re inside the room itself.

“Was it good?”

“Was it-” he looks at her, confused. “Was what good?”

“The drawing, Jim. Was it any good?” she presses.

“I don’t know. It was a child’s drawing,” he shrugs. “It had two people, I guess. Papa and Eleven?”

“Eleven?”

“Look, I don’t know. It looked like an adult and a kid but basically stick figures.”

She stands up and walks over to the fridge, not even bothering to set down her fork but using it to point at a drawing hanging there. “Then Will didn’t draw that.”

“Yeah,” he says on an exhale. Even to his unartistic eye he can see the difference. “Yeah, no, Will didn’t draw that. But, um, Earl.”

“Earl?” Joyce plunks back down into her chair across from him and shovels the final bite of eggs in her mouth then crosses her arms, her trademark I’m waiting look on her face plain as day.

“The night Benny died, he, Earl, saw a kid with a shaved head, with Benny. He said it might’ve been Will, after I pressed him, at first he didn’t think so–”

“So… it wasn’t him?” she asks.

“Stay with me here. There’s this woman, Terry Ives. She claims she lost her kid, a daughter, Jane. She sued Brenner, the government, it went nowhere, of course, but… What if this whole time I thought I was looking for Will, I’ve been chasing some other kid?”

“Is that who we’re talking to today? Terry?”

How does every name sound like the name of a friend when she says it? He wonders.

“I think that’s where we should start, yeah.” 

He grabs their dishes and takes them to the sink to rinse off while she pours a second mug of coffee.

“Do you have a phone number for her? An address? How do you even find things like that?” Her forehead is scrunched up again as she lists off her questions.

“I’ve got a contact who I think can get that for us. I don’t wanna be overly suspicious, but I don’t think we should call from here though,” he eyes her phone with skepticism.

“Wouldn’t want to be paranoid like Joyce Byers,” she says dryly.

“No, no that’s not-” he quickly tries to explain himself.

She laughs. Actually laughs. “Relax, Hop. It was a joke. And… I don’t trust it either,” she shrugs. “So we call from a payphone later.”

“Yeah,” he smiles at her. “A payphone.”

She finds an unused toothbrush for him and she throws on some clothes and when they’re both ready, they leave the house to investigate.

“Why do group projects exist anyway” Benny grouses.

“Are you both serious right now?” Joyce’s eyes are wide as she stares down sixteen year old Benny Hammond and James Hopper Jr. who, in spite of towering over her, are acting like two year olds.

“We all know that you’ll both promise to research but I’ll end up doing most of it and I will end up presenting it.”

“I’m no good at presenting,” Jim shrugs. “You're a natural at that, Joycie. Everyone listens to you, you explain it clearly.”

They sit down at a table together as students mill around them. Benny and Jim pull sandwiches from their bags and Jim slides something across to her. “Mom said this was yours. Someone should eat it so it isn’t wasted.”

She takes it with a murmured thank you. Mrs. Hopper always knew.

“So I guess I can go to the library later,” Jim begins, sounding sullen. “Maybe I’ll tackle the biographical side of things. You know, key players and all that.”

She nods and then Benny chimes in.

“I’ll look into, I dunno, timeline of the events? Or pivotal moments? What do you think?” He looks back at Joyce and Jim.

“If you give me the main sequence of events and Jim does the research on key players, and if you both cite your sources,” she glares. “I can do deep dives on whatever we need in order to make it a cohesive presentation.”

“Aren’t you glad you got put in a group with us, Joyce?” Benny teases.

“Yeah, we’re great at investigating,” Jim chimes in.

“Sure,” she snorts. “So glad.” But in spite of the teasing, she is.

“Finally,” he grumbles. “One point for the investigators.”

They’ve pulled up to Terry Ives’ house after Hopper made a few phone calls. It feels like defeat after defeat in this case as even the discoveries have been depressing.

“As I remember, you’re great at investigating,” she raises her eyebrows as she looks at him. If she weren’t still so tired and scared, she could laugh. In her Pinto, he looks like he’s all folded up on himself. “Honestly, Jim? The fact that you found out so much about the lab, that you went back to the morgue, that you found Terry here,” she takes a breath, thinking of how she wants to say it. “It’s unfolding slower than I want, but answers are answers.”

“Yeah, it’s just,” he pulls a face. “You’ve been right about every damn thing the whole time. Should’ve just asked you what to do next.”

“It’s not like I knew what to do,” she shrugs helplessly.

He’s glad she’s not holding a grudge for the way he questioned her, but he can’t help but wonder if time was wasted. 

Getting out, he strides around to pull her door open and offer her a hand. They stand on the porch, a cop and an anxious mom, side by side waiting for the answers they hope are on the other side of the door.

“Can I help you?” This isn’t Terry Ives, Hopper knows that much from the pictures in the paper.

“Uh, yeah, we’re looking for Terry Ives. She live here?”

“Who’s asking?”

“Hawkins Chief of Police, Jim Hopper.” He flashes his badge.

Joyce smiles and gives a nervous wave as if she’s about to ask the woman to buy Girl Scout cookies and Jim raises his eyebrows a little, thinking yet again that years may have passed but she’s still the same Joycie Maldonado he knew as a kid.

"Okay…But you want to speak with my sister?”

“If your sister’s Terry Ives, then yeah, we do,” he confirms.

“What about?”

“We just have a few questions.” He says it more forcefully than he means to, but all he wants is answers and he’s feeling like she’s holding back when they haven’t even really started to talk.

"About her daughter,” Joyce chimes in.

“You’re wasting your time.”

“Please,” Joyce says softly. “My son is missing. Maybe you’ve seen on the news? His name is Will. He’s nine and he…” she trails off, pulling out the flyer with her son’s picture, holding it out.

He feels his heart stutter because he knows what it’s like to have the life of your child slip through your fingers. Hopper can imagine how easy it would be to just stop everything else and look her in the eye, promising her that they’ll find her son and everything will be fine. But he also knows promises like that can be empty. Joyce is strong, she’s had to be, but he can see cracks and worries that the pieces might not be able to be put back together this time.

“I’m sorry about that. Your son, I mean. I am. But I don’t see how this has anything to do with Terry.”

“Her daughter, Jane. We think maybe the same people who took her also took Will,” she explains.

“You don't understand how impossible that is.”

The woman begins to shut the door but Joyce’s hand whips out and stops it. “Please, even if it’s not possible, I -- I need her to tell me. Please.” 

“Fine. You can come in. But if you need Terry to tell you anything, you’re about five years too late.”

She opens the door and Joyce and Hopper follow, shooting a puzzled glance at each other. He just wants answers, to find the kid, to help.

“I’m Becky,” the woman offers. “Terry’s my sister. Terry? You have some visitors.”

Hopper feels like the floor drops out from under him, seeing the empty gaze of the woman before him. Her glazed over eyes are too close to a reflection of him at his worst. She looks right through them. 

“What’s wrong with her?” he manages to ask, earning a glare from Joyce who immediately kneels down to talk with the woman.

“Terry? My name’s Joyce. We’d like to ask you some questions about your daughter, Jane.”

The tiniest flicker passes across her face at the mention of Jane and then the emptiness takes over again.

“We wanted to know, when was she taken?” The gentleness in Joyce’s voice is soothing but there’s no answer coming.

“What’s your relationship with Doctor Brenner?” Hopper asks.

“See, my son’s missing. He’s been missing for almost a week now…”

Nothing.

“Like I said,” Becky chimes in. “This is a waste of time. Come sit down. Don't know if I can, but I’ll see if I can answer anything for you.”

Terry’s sister leads them to the kitchen where she sits abruptly and begins to smoke. He pulls a chair out and tilts his head at it and Joyce sits, then he takes another empty spot, ready to listen but not overly optimistic at this point.

“So, Terry was part of some study, in college.”

“MKUltra?” Hopper offers, questioning. He read about it and the pieces are coming together finally.

“Yeah that’s the one. Started in the fifties. By the time Terry got involved, it was supposed to be winding up, but the drugs were just getting crazier. It completely messed her up. Wasn't too bad at first, but she got worse over time, and now,” she looks toward the other room where her sister sits. “Here we are.”

“This was the CIA who ran this?”

“Hmm,” she smiles, lips tight. “You and Terry would’ve gotten along. “The Man” with a capital “M” -- same guys who killed Kennedy and King, am I right?”

Joyce is just watching. Becky then Hopper, question then cagey answer. A frown of concentration and puzzlement on her face.

“Truth is, it was a bunch of hippie professors taking government money. They’d pay a couple hundred bucks to people like my sister, then give ’em drugs -- psychedelics. LSD, mostly. Then they’d have her strip naked and get into these isolation tanks.”

“Isolation tanks” Joyce whispers, connecting more dots in her mind. This was what Jim told her about the lab. This happened basically in their back yard for years on end. 

“Giant tubs, like a bathtub, filled with water and a ton of salt. Enough so you float in there. You lose any sense of…orientation, sound, feeling. Their theory was that it expanded the boundaries of the mind or some crap. Terry was into it though. She wasn't forced. Thing is, she didn’t know she was pregnant at the time.”

He’d thought Joyce couldn’t look more concerned, but at the mention of Terry’s child, she’s picking at her cuticles, something she’s always done when nervous. One of the milder things she does when she’s nervous.

“Jane?” she asks, worriedly.

“Yup.” 

“Do you have any pictures of her?” Joyce asks. “Of Jane?”

“I don’t think you understand,” Becky’s eyes widen at whatever apparent miscommunication she’s about to correct. “Terry miscarried in the third trimester. She has a nursery upstairs. It’s been sitting there all set up for nearly a decade. She pretends like Jane’s real. Like she’s gonna come home someday. Says she’s special, born with ‘abilities.’”

He sees the look on Joyce’s face before he hears her whisper.

“Abilities?”

“You look actually scared,” Becky laughs. “It’s all make-believe.”

“But, but what abilities?” Joyce presses.

“Telepathy, telekinesis -- you know, manipulating shit with your mind. That’s why the ‘big bad man’ stole Jane away, see? Terry's baby is a weapon, in her mind. She's off saving the world.” Leaning back, Becky takes another drag on her cigarette and Jim desperately wants one too.

“The doctors all say it’s a coping mechanism or something. To deal with the guilt of it, you know?”

“You don’t think she could be telling the truth?” Joyce suggests tentatively.

Becky’s eyebrows raise sky-high and Joyce backtracks, clarifying.

“About having had the baby?”

“No birth certificate, nothing from the hospital, doctor and nurses all confirm she miscarried.”

But now Jim chimes in. “And no indications it might’ve been covered up?” 

Becky just smiles and slowly shakes her head. “Like I say, you and Terry would’ve gotten along. Look, I’m sorry I can’t be any more help.”

“No, not your fault,” Hopper murmurs and scoots his chair back to stand. “Joyce?”

“Hmm?” she says to him then gives her head a tiny shake and turns to Becky. “Thank you for your time, Becky.”

“Sure,” she leads them to the front door and calls out after them. “Good luck with your son. I really do hope you find him.”

They settle back into the car, Hopper all scrunched up again, and are about to drive away when he catches a glimpse of her.

“Joyce? Hey?” 

Her head swings toward him. “What?”

“We’re going to find him,” is all he says. He can practically feel it. They’re so close.

“Like Terry found her daughter?” She thumps her head back against the headrest and lets out a giant sigh.

He fishes around in his pocket, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it and bringing it to his lips. A moment later he passes it to her without speaking. Like they used to in high school. She coughs, just like she used to in high school, then scowls at him. She doesn’t hand it back though.

“We’re almost there. We’re close.”

“A decade, Jim. She spent the better part of nearly a decade looking.”

He reaches a hand out to her, a vague invitation to either hand back the smoke or to hold his hand.

“She was at Benny’s just five days ago. That means we’ve got a chance.”

She puts her hand in his and squeezes.

“You know what I’d give? For a chance? You know what I’d give?” He asks her softly.

She opens her mouth to say something but is cut off by his radio.

“Chief? Chief you there?”

He sighs. “What?” he snaps.

“Fight broke out over-”

“I don’t really have time to-”

“It’s Jonathan Byers,” the radio squawks. “You haven’t seen Joyce, have you?”

Something between a grunt and a groan comes from between his tightly clenched teeth.

“Gimme twenty minutes. I’ll make sure Joyce is there.”

“Sure thing Chief.”

He stops himself from saying something like he’s fine because it’s not helpful and he’s certain that both of them remember high school and being in the back of his dad’s patrol car. He settles for quiet and passing another cigarette back and forth between them.

Ever since she couldn’t feel him anymore, couldn’t find him, the drowning feeling was getting worse. Usually, with “normal” trials like choosing to repair the car or pay the mortgage it wasn’t a physical pain but rather a state where she was increasingly overwhelmed by each additional thing. But this was a tightness in her chest, a burning in her lungs, and heaviness in her limbs. This was an unbearable, crushing weight.

It was difficult to sort out whether knowing she’d been right meant anything meaningful now. Did it really matter that the body wasn’t her son’s if they could never find him? Did it matter if Jonathan was willing to talk about the thing in the walls if the thing was what had Will and was never giving him back?

Ultimately it was that, not being right itself, but knowing that Will had been so close that made her dig deeper one more time. Once more she decided to look for him, listen to him, by looking for this other lost child.

And when they get so few answers from Terry and Becky she wants to quit, she really does. She wants to die. She can’t fathom continuing when her youngest is gone. In her mind she knows she can’t. She can’t leave Jonathan, can’t do that to him. But she just doesn’t want to exist anymore.

He parks in the woods and makes his way around the lab to the spot he’s deemed the best access point. From what he remembers of the security footage, it seems like a blind spot or as close as there is to one at a highly secured building. Outside the perimeter fence he takes his bolt cutters and snips his way in, creating a hole big enough to fit through. It’s a series of dashes between stands of trees and unsurveilled areas until he reaches the building itself, and then he waits to slip in behind a pair of lab-coated researchers as they chat animatedly while walking to their cars.

Navigating his way through the corridors he finds himself at a dead end, trapped at a door that requires a key card, with a couple of security officers approaching with their guns drawn.

“Forgot that we have cameras inside, huh?” one guard smirks.

He holds his hands up, empty. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Calm down man. Dr. Brenner is the one who asked for me. How do you think I got in here in the first place?”

The security guards glance at each other. “What’s your name again?”

“Hopper. Chief Jim Hopper.” He glares, trying for an annoyed look. That shouldn’t be hard to achieve. He is, in fact, annoyed.

The guard closer to him reaches for his walkie. “Yeah, I got a Jim Hop-”

Hopper drives the butt of his gun onto the top of the man’s head and he crumples to the ground, then he shoves the other guard against the wall at gunpoint.

“Hey,” he grins at the man. “Mind if I borrow a key for this thing?” He jerks his head toward the door behind him. Grabbing the key card off the guard he yanks it free and then, keeping his gun trained on the man, backs through the door, shooting the keypad behind him.

An alarm blares and lights flash. Just in time, he thinks, heading deeper into the building.

She doesn’t know why Lonnie is inside her house, but it happened easily enough. Maybe, she muses, it’s because he’s been there for almost all the worst parts of her life. Why should this be any different? Mostly she feels powerless to turn him away and she finds that she just plain doesn’t care. She can’t bring herself to care about anything. 

Isn’t one of the stages of grief denial? How can one know whether denial is grief or if it’s confidence? Assurance that nothing has happened or something has not?

He comes back with two glasses and some bourbon. “Here,” he pours and then slides one glass her way. “Drink this.”

“No, Lon,” she mumbles. “That’s not going to help.” It’s not like she never drinks. She has her vices too, mostly smoking though. It’s just that she doesn’t trust him when he drinks.

“It’ll calm you down. Help you think straight,” he insists, downing what he’s poured for himself in a couple of gulps.

She waits a beat then begins, hoping that maybe, just maybe, he will actually listen. “I just don’t know what to do.”

“Yeah?” He pours himself more and she grimaces.

“The whole time, the last four days, I could feel him. I knew he was alive. I knew he was close.” 

She takes a deep, calming breath, determined to stay on top of her feelings. A breeze ruffles the tarp that covers the hole she made in the wall and she shivers. Lonnie reaches over and tugs the crocheted afghan from the back of the couch and puts it over her shoulders. But the problem is, she’s not cold. She’s scared. Scared that Will is somewhere she can never get to.

“He was right there,” she nods her head to the broken wall. “I could almost touch him. But now,” her voice wavers. “I don’t feel him anymore. It’s like he’s gone.”

When Lonnie finally looks at her, she sees it. The pity. The doubt. The patronizing gaze.

“Oh, no, don’t,” her pointer finger jabs at him and her words come out in a growl. 

“What? What’d I say?” He gives her an innocent look, palms up.

“Jesus, you’re looking at me the same way they all do! Like I’m outta my goddamn mind!”

“Joyce, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think you need to seriously consider the possibility that all this,” he waves his hand at the wall. “It’s in your head.”

“No,” she insists. “No, Lonnie.”

“Remember your Aunt Darlene…” he begins.

“This isn’t like that!” she spits back, anger rising.

“No? You experience something like this, your mind can make things up to help you cope, you know? I mean, Jesus, there’s a funeral tomorrow, for our little boy.”

She presses her knuckles to her mouth, keeping in the wail of sorrow and outrage that tries to escape. Her mind flips back again to denial and grief and the absolute certainty that it isn’t her son they’ve found.

“Joyce, you’re sayin’ his body’s fake? And he’s in the wall? How do you explain any of that? It doesn’t make any sense. It just doesn’t. At least talk to a shrink or, or what about Pastor Charles?”

“They can’t help,” she whispers. He doesn’t believe her. Nobody does. And she can’t see how it matters at this point even if they did.

“You just told me yourself that Will’s gone. What else is there to do?”

An awkward silence stretches between them before she answers. “I don’t know.” 

It doesn’t matter anymore.

She grabs the glass of bourbon and starts to drink.

Jim Hopper knows he’s running out of time. It’s probably just a matter of minutes before they track him down and who knows what happens after that. But now he has a chance to find Will, so he moves quickly, flashlight shining, taking in every detail that he can and filing it away to ponder later.

“Will!” he hollers. “Will Byers!”

There’s an eerie silence in these empty halls. Room after room he enters and notes many of the same details. Cots with white sheets, minimal furniture such as bedside tables and lamps. Two-way mirrors for observations. An EEG machine. One room has a stuffed animal, a tiger, on the cot and a child’s drawing on the wall. He feels his ire rise; the place is like a prison and they kept a child here. 

“Will!” he calls again. “Can you hear me?”

He can hear voices pursuing him now, getting closer. He runs for a freight elevator, pressing the button over and over when he sees the guards running down the hallway toward him. He holds his breath until the door closes, buying him more precious moments to search. But the doors open to an unexpected setting.

He’d assumed there would be more rooms. Maybe files holding confidential information. He walks into a space that has been carved out underground. The floor, the ground, is damp and earthy smelling. Something is floating in the air, like dust motes but bigger. Like ash, but cold. He coughs on it but keeps walking.

“Will?” he calls out again, but softer this time because it feels like he shouldn’t be here. Nobody should be here. 

There’s a glow coming from a rift in the wall and as he nears, he sees it’s almost like a murky window. Gingerly touching it he jerks his hand back. It’s cold and slick and almost soft.

“Will Byers!” he coughs out, looking around the gloom. His eyes are playing tricks on him because he thinks he detects movement, but his scan of the space with his flashlight reveals nothing.

Nothing until he turns around to face a guard in a gas mask who abruptly stabs him in the neck with a needle and he goes down.

Lonnie’s car is there. Jonathan can feel his heart beat faster just at the sight of it, anxiety rising inside of him. So many thoughts run through his mind and he tries to grasp them before he goes in to confront whatever awaits him there. At the forefront of his mind is the certainty that his dad just can’t be here right now.

It’s been years since his mom kicked Lonnie out, years since the divorce was finalized, but even though he’d been young he’d seen what went on. Oh, his mom protected him and Will from a lot. But the power his dad, Lonnie, held over his mom was tyrannical. He chipped away at her with his words for years, taking her down bit by bit, making her doubt herself by repeating his lies, until she had no energy left to figure out who she really was. He was an artist when it came to using his fists, making sure that most of the time whatever marks he left could be hidden. 

Jonathan saw. Even when their mom sent them to bed early and he whined about not being tired, he realized later that she was protecting them, anticipating Lonnie’s return home on a bender, angry and violent.

He saw. When his mom made Will cupcakes for his fourth birthday, using every last ingredient. And she skipped breakfast– and likely more– because the refrigerator was empty because Lonnie had spent the money on other things.

Jonathan saw. When they had a rare family meal and Lonnie would pretend to care about their stories of the day. Moments into their conversation and he was already telling their mom how she was telling her own story wrong.

So when Jonathan steps inside and sees the nearly empty bottle of bourbon, sees his mom folding in on herself, he makes a choice.

“Hey kid,” Lonnie greets him.

He gives the man a sideways glance, more of a glare, and addresses his mom. “What’s going on?”

“Um,” Joyce rubs her temples and closes her eyes. “You dad, he’s gonna stay the night. On the couch,” she clarifies.

“‘M here as long as you need me,” he chimes in, far too chipper for the situation. “How you holding up?”

“Mom,” Jonathan crouches in front of her and grabs her hands. “Mom, what happened? Did the…thing come back?” He looks over his shoulder at the hole in the wall.

“Hey,” Lonnie is standing. “We’re not talking about that.”

“Can we talk? Alone?” Jonathan isn’t as big as his father. But he also isn't as beaten down by years of abuse, because his mom sheltered him from that with every fiber of her being. It’s his turn.

“You need to leave,” he says simply when they’re in his room. “You can’t stay. Not even on the couch.”

“Hey, hey, I get you’re upset. We all are. But I need you to listen to me. Your mom’s sick, real sick–”

“No! You listen to me this time,” Jonathan asserts. “You being here, it makes things worse.”

“Worse? She took down that wall with an ax! Thought Will was inside it, talking to her! She’s unstable. And if you encourage those hallucinations, you’ll push her right over the edge,” Lonnie hisses, leaning in.

But it’s the talk of hallucinations and the assertion that his mom is unstable that solidify his resolve.

“Well, thank god you’re here making it all better,” he shoots back. “Leave, you can’t stay.”

“Are we really fighting over spending the night on the fucking couch?”

Jonathan levels his voice. “You know what we’re really fighting over,” he says, bitterly.

Lonnie stalks from the room and Jonathan can hear him yell as he leaves.

“I’ll be back tomorrow for the funeral. Have fun with the son you didn’t lose, Joyce!” 

Jonathan hesitates for a moment, but goes out to sit next to his mom on the couch, close enough that she slides toward him when the cushions dip. He pulls his arm from where it’s smashed between them and she leans into a side-hug.

“I screwed up so many things,” she whispers, voice quivering. “But I am so goddamn proud of who you’ve turned out to be. You and your brother are the best parts of my life.”

He jolts awake. He’s in his trailer. It’s morning and sunlight is streaming in through the slats between the blinds but…

How is he here?

The last thing he remembers is being in the lab, being underground.

Beside him lay his bottles of pills, open and scattered, several cans of beer, and a general state of disarray. This isn’t right.

Is it paranoia if you have reasons to believe the conspiracies? Is it delusional to believe in the monsters when you’ve seen their human counterparts?

And so the search begins. At first, Hopper doesn’t know what he’s looking for. Evidence that he was drugged, maybe. Clues that someone else has been in his trailer, leaving him there in the middle of the night and setting things up. Surveillance devices.

That’s when he starts to search everywhere. Lamps. Behind pictures and mirrors, anything with a frame. Cushions and pillows, the sofa and bed. The phone. The overhead fixture in the living room.

That’s where he finds it, and when he does he’s relieved. Vindicated. The room has been bugged. This is definitely something bigger.

Hopper whips his head to the side when he hears the gravel outside crunch under the tires of an approaching vehicle. There’s no reason to think it’s a threat, but he grabs his gun anyway before nudging the curtains aside to peek out front.

Powell and Callahan. He sighs, knowing it’s best not to involve them in whatever is bubbling beneath the surface. It’s also best not showing them the mess he’s created in finding the bug.

Three crisp knocks on the door resound and then, “Hey, uh, Chief? You in there?”

“Yeah!” he yells back. “Yeah, yeah, yeah.” He inches the door open, slides out, and yanks it shut behind him, immediately grimacing. Smooth he thinks to himself. Not suspicious at all. He wants to slap his palm to his forehead but holds himself in place as if everything was normal. “Hey guys…”

“Yeah,” Callahan replies. “Um, your phone is dead and Bev Mooney came in all upset. Said Dale and Henry were out huntin’ yesterday but never came back.”

Powell chimes in, explaining. “She thought they were on another binger, but now she’s not so sure. I think with the whole Will Byers thing everyone’s on edge”

“Where was this?” Hopper scrubs his hand over his face, trying to figure out what comes next.

“Back at the station,” says Callahan.

“No,” he tries not to roll his eyes. “Where were Dale and Henry hunting?”

“Near Kerley.”

“Mirkwood,” the chief mumbles.

“What’s that?” Powell asks.

“Nothin’. Just go back to the station. I can deal with it.” He turns to go back inside.

“You’re sure, Chief?” asks Callahan, clearly skeptical.

“Yeah, leave it. I got it.” He’s about to close the door when Powell chimes in.

“Oh hey, some good news!”

“What?” Hopper snaps back, impatient.

“Barbara Holland’s car. Seems she ran away after all. Staties found it late last night at a bus station.”

“Staties?”

“Funny, right?” asks Powell. “They keep doing our jobs for us.”

“Real funny,” Hopper replies before closing the door firmly. He catches a glimpse of them as the car pulls down the driveway and sighs at the mess.

They’re at the funeral. Her baby’s funeral.

It’s as if she’s invisible. Not that she wants this to be about her. She most definitely doesn’t. But she thinks through the fog in her mind that it wouldn’t hurt to exist in her own right. As soon as Lonnie shows up, she disappears. People see him first and sometimes, if they care to notice her, it’s as if they look through his lens and see what he wants them to see instead of seeing her. It seems like it has always been like that, all the way back to childhood. She was only truly seen when her dad and later Lonnie weren’t there.

She used to think that was acceptable. She didn’t need to be seen in order to know who she was. For a while that was true. When it was just her, it was true. But she sees now what it’s cost her. Nobody to see her when she was a neglected child, but she grew up. Nobody to see her when she was stuck in an abusive marriage, but she got out. Nobody to see her when she claimed that her son was taken. The cost of being invisible was her son’s life.

She almost rips her dress off as soon as they’re home. Jonathan has chosen to spend the afternoon out, either with Nancy or other friends and Joyce knows it’s because he won’t come back to the house with his father there. She can’t blame him, but for all his faults, Lonnie has lost a child too.

He’s out in the living room, slapping old boards over the hole in the wall, acting like she hasn’t taken care of the house for years now. Like she doesn’t know how to patch drywall or shove more insulation in there or fix the exterior. 

“What are you doing, Lonnie?” She knows she sounds irritated. She is irritated.

“What does it look like I’m doing? You really wanna freeze to death this winter?” he shoots back.

“I can fix it myself,” she begins, then sees the lights taken down too and her annoyance rises even more. “I told you to leave those up!”

“They’re in the way, babe.”

She glares at him and begins rehanging them. There’s still a chance she tells herself.

“You know, it’s a shame what they’ve done to this family,” Lonnie begins.

Her brain scrambles to catch up because they haven’t been a family in years. Second– and she actually has come far enough to recognize this as a small victory, this recognition of his many manipulations– she wonders who he is blaming because for once, shockingly, it isn’t her. A mumbled, “What?” is all she can manage.

“The Sattler Company.” He drives another nail in and she turns away to hang more lights. “I stopped by their quarry on the way over here. Just wanted to see, you know? And I couldn’t believe it. There’s no fence, no warning signs -- no nothing. Oughta be held accountable, you ask me.”

People think she rambles, but here her ex is, going on about a damn quarry that he probably hadn’t thought of in years. She feels herself tensing up. Not only is it annoying and out of character, but it feels strange. Like he’s trying too hard to care about something that he truly doesn’t.

“There.” He pounds a final nail in and, tossing the hammer on the floor, stalks off down the hallway to the bathroom. 

She shakes her head and continues her task, kicking his overnight bag out of the way as she stands on the couch to hang the lights. The flyer, printed on bright blue paper and sticking out of the top, grabs her attention.

“A. Kohner and associates! Let us fight for you!” she reads under her breath, then skims down to where their specialties include wrongful accidents. She’s still gripping the flyer in trembling hands when he comes back from the bathroom. 

“Admit it,” she hisses at him, eyes blazing. “Admit it! This is why you’re here! Not because you care about Will! You never have!”

“Jesus Christ, Joyce!” he yells. “His funeral was today, can we not do this right now?!”

She’s shaking her head incredulously, though why she’s surprised is beyond her. This is so on-brand for Lonnie. Maybe she’s just shocked that she didn’t notice. Shocked that she could ever have assumed he was there to help. “I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I fell for this.”

“I’m here to help, Joyce!” He’s still yelling.

 “To help?” she sputters.

“We could use that money for good!” His eyes are wild and she realizes she is definitely not the one who is unhinged here.

“Pay off your debts, you mean?” she mutters, knowing that she shouldn’t egg him on, knowing that she should just kick him out now before anything else.

“Could use it to pay for Jon to go to college,” he says, smirking as if this idea makes him selfless, as if this was the actual plan and not an argument he probably came up with just a moment ago to justify his actions.

“Don’t. Don’t do that!”

“Do what?” he shrugs.

“Lie to me!”

He sounds like a child as he retorts, “That’s not a lie!”

“Where does Jonathan want to go? You don’t even know. Because you’ve never cared and you didn’t just start.” She doesn’t expect to feel sad about this. It’s not new, he had never spent enough time with either of his sons to actually know them. Never listened long enough to learn their likes and dislikes. Had never cared. And she feels like a failure again for not making sure they had a father figure who actually did.

“What? I… if we get that money he can go anywhere he damn well pleases,” he presses on but she’s done.

“Get out.” She isn’t loud when she says it, but her voice doesn’t shake in spite of her anger.

“You need me here,” he argues.

“Haven’t needed you for a long time now.”

“Oh come on, Joyce. Just look at this place! What do you want me to think?! ‘World’s Best Mom?’” he mocks.

Joyce strides back over to the damn overnight bag and shoves the flyer back into it, zipping it closed.

“Maybe you’re right,” she shrugs. For years she had truly thought he was. “Maybe I’m crazy, out-of-my-mind, but I’ll keep those lights up till I die if there’s a chance Will’s still out there.” She hates that she’s crying, but she is. All she wants is for him to be gone. Him to be gone and Will to be back. “Because if he is out there, God help me I will find him.”

She shoves the bag into Lonnie’s chest and he has to whip his arms out to catch it when she turns away.

“Now get out of my house.”

“Daddy! Daddy, look!” Sara’s eyes sparkle, even in the dark, as she pulls away from the telescope.

“Don’t even know what I’m looking at,” he replies, letting her take his hand and pull him in.

“Daddy!” she sighs in exasperation. “It’s just the moon! But when you’re just looking, like this,” she stares out the window, eyes dramatically wide. “Then you can only see that one piece of it, the bright glowy piece.”

“Yeah?” He scoots closer to her little body and looks where she’s pointing.

“It’s just ‘cause of shadows and stuff though. When you look through the telescope you can even see the dark piece of it.” She tugs at him again and he lowers his eye to look through the telescope.

He’s not sure what she finds so utterly fascinating, but he can admit that there’s something arresting about the vastness of the solar system.

“It’s a waxing gibbous.”

“What’s a what?” he asks her, eliciting another sigh.

“A waxing gibbous, Daddy. It’s,” she bites her lower lip as she thinks. “It’s mostly that side of the moon that’s out.” She gestures with her right hand, as if she’s tracing the visible part of the moon.

He gives his head a shake, as if that can keep the memories at bay. It’s almost dusk and tonight will be a waxing gibbous moon.

He’s spent the day– after disassembling his trailer then attempting to put it back into some sort of order– looking to see if there was any evidence of Dale and Henry’s hunting trip. Any evidence of foul play. It was easy enough to find their camp, but they weren't there. It should have been reassuring, but it wasn’t. At least not to him. Not with everything else going on.

Now he’s waiting until it’s dark to go out to the Byers’ place, maybe just another few minutes. He’s not sure why he feels like it has to be dark, but it seems like maybe he’s being watched and darkness is the tiniest bit of cover.

He hops in the Blazer and heads over. Most of the time he likes to have the radio on. It keeps him alert, his mind moving to a beat and a rhythm but tonight he keeps it turned off. He has to think about how he’s going to handle this without creating a bigger problem. The first issue is that Joyce’s place could be bugged by whoever put that listening device in his trailer. Joyce’s strong suit has never been quiet. That brings a smile to his face in spite of current troubles.

It’s more what comes next that has him worried. She scared him with the talk of hearing Will. He didn’t understand it. Oh, she was right about things, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t on the edge of some precipice he couldn’t see and he didn’t want to push her over. But he couldn’t see any other way than just honesty.

He pauses a moment before he knocks, handwritten note reading “DON”T SAY ANYTHING” written in black marker on the back of a takeout menu in his hand.

“Lonnie, go home!” comes Joyce’s voice from inside.

He knocks again.

“Lonnie, I swear to God–” 

Even after knowing her for more than twenty years he’s surprised that someone of her stature can almost rip a door of its hinges. He holds the sign at eye level and makes a shushing motion, finger to his lips.

What? Her mouth forms the word. Her eyes are huge, wild, as she tries to figure out what’s happening. What? she mouths again.

He grabs her hand and pulls her to the porch then bends to whisper an explanation to her that precipitates their search, all too similar to the one at his place earlier. Couch cushions, though he pulls the covers off hers instead of slicing into them, lamps and other light fixtures. Every single damn bulb from the Christmas lights she has strung everywhere.

They finally sit on the couch, staring at the disarray that has once again struck her home.

“What the hell, Jim?” she sighs, tired, frustrated, unspeakably sad.

“They bugged my place,” he begins.

“Yeah, that’s what you said. Who? Who bugged your place?”

“The CIA, the NSA, Department of Energy, I don’t know.” He rubs his face, his eyes, and wishes he knew more. Knew anything.

“I– I don’t understand,” she whispers, sounding utterly dejected, like someone the world has put through the ringer.

“I went to the morgue, Joyce,” he blurts out.

Immediately she’s more alert, eyes wider, watching more closely.

“I went to the morgue last night. It wasn’t him.”

He watches a thousand different emotions cross her face in that moment.

“The body. It was a fake. You were right, Joyce. You were right all along.”

She’s biting her lower lip and she can’t look at him, but he can guess most of what she’s thinking. It may have been years, but he knows her well enough. He gives her a moment, hears the sniffle that signifies her pulling herself together, and puts out his arm to tuck her under it for a moment. She fits right into his side and they sit while her breathing evens out.

Joyce sits up straighter a minute later, shifts to turn and face him more directly. Her eyes are red rimmed and she sniffles once more, but her jaw is set and her shoulders are straight.

“What happens next?”

“Look, I’ve been wrong about a lot of this so far, so I’m not saying this is the answer,” he begins. “But I think in the morning, we go maybe talk to some people. I might have a couple leads”

She nods, eyes wide in the darkness, ready for any action, any plan that might give way to some answers.

He unfolds himself from the tiny couch with a grunt. “I’ll call you before I come get you in the morning?” He assumes she’s going to want to come with him. It’s then he recalls his phone is in several pieces after being disassembled in his search and he has to keep himself from groaning aloud.

“Yeah, sure,” she replies, looking small and lost in her spot on the couch.

“M’kay.” He sticks his hat back on, ready to head out.

“Wait, Hop?” She sighs, not looking at him. “Just…stay.”

“What?”

“On the, on the couch,” she clarifies. “It’s just Jonathan’s with friends and,” she rolls her eyes. “Lonnie and everything… I don’t want to be here alone and you’re just coming back anyway.”

“Oh,” he says dumbly. “Yeah. Yeah sure.”

He ends up in her bed– he’s tall and she claims it would be actual cruelty to make him sleep on the couch itself. She sleeps in one of the boys’ rooms, whichever one shares a wall with hers, because he hears her knock on the wall right before he falls asleep, the same pattern they used to knock on each other's doors as kids and he wonders if it was on purpose. 

“Night, Jim. Thank you.” Her voice is muffled through the wall but he guesses that it’s husky sounding due to emotions, not just wallboard.