#tracker jacker

Not loudly tonight. Not with that full game-show, gleaming-teeth insanity they wear in the daylight hours, when the blood’s still fresh and the cameras are drunk on motion and the audience wants to be told where to look and how to feel.

Now they’re quieter.

Still delighted. Still polished. Still very much themselves.

But quieter.

Like late-night radio hosts whispering over a crime scene.

“And there you have it,” Caesar is saying with a grin audible even through the television static, voice low and velvety, “Indiana continuing to prove exactly why this district pair has become such a phenomenon. We are now into the forty-second hour of active arena time and still—still!—our viewers remain absolutely riveted.”

Claudius gives one of those smooth, smug little nods of his. “It’s astonishing, Caesar. We have not seen sustained engagement like this since the Games debut out of Alaska—and even then, not with quite this level of emotional investment.”

Jonathan rolls his eyes.

Emotional investment.

Yeah.

That’s one way to describe the whole country watching two people he knows fight not to die.

Onscreen, the feed shifts away from the studio and back into the arena. Tall dark grasses ripple under the dim moonlight. Wind hisses low through them, like breath through teeth.

Thresh is there.

Not obvious. Not in some stupid cinematic way. If Jonathan hadn’t already been staring at the screen hard enough to make his eyes ache? He might’ve missed him… But then the grass parts, just enough to show the shape of a shoulder. A jawline. The dark blunt silhouette of a boy built like some old god of harvest and war, hidden down in the green-black sea of it with a sword laid across one forearm and his body gone still enough to pass for earth.

“And, of course,” Claudius murmurs, “our audience continues to speculate about District Eleven’s powerhouse. Still holding the far grasslands. Still unallied. Still very much a threat.” “He’s fascinating,” Caesar revels, near whispered. “That calm. That patience. One almost forgets how brutally effective he was at the Cornucopia.”

Jonathan doesn’t forget.

None of them do.

The screen changes images again. Deeper woods now, tighter shadows...

Foxface.

She’s curled up somewhere inside a thicket with her knees tucked in and her sharp little face half-hidden beneath a mess of orange hair, looking for all the world like a woodland animal that decided the safest thing it could do was become a shape inside other shapes and pray nothing meaner noticed.

“The creek,” Claudius is saying now… 

The expanded water line. The game makers’ decision to reroute and deepen certain channels. The strategic implications of dehydration and territory and who might be clever enough to read the change in the land before the rest.

Jonathan barely absorbs it.

He’s already pushing off the bed. Because he knows if he stays sitting there for too long, he’s gonna keep thinking. And if he keeps thinking, he’s going to start imagining every possible version of dawn where the TV says your name instead of showing your face.

So he stands.

Pads quietly across the room.

Opens his door without a sound.

The hallway outside is narrow and familiar and dark in that old, worn-down Byers way. He passes Will’s room first and glances in automatically out of instinct, even though he already knows what he’s going to find.

An empty bed.

Blankets thrown back.

Pillow crooked.

Jonathan pauses anyway — one hand on the frame, staring at the vacancy with a little exhale through his nose before moving on down the hall toward the living room.

Sure enough, there’s Will — curled up on the couch in the quilt Joyce always drags out when weather gets mean or life does. He’s dead asleep… one arm tucked under his head, dark hair falling over his brow, lips parted just slightly. The TV glow washes soft silver over his face, making him look impossibly young again for one second — young in the way that twelve-year-olds are supposed to be, not the way this world has forced them to stop being.

And beside him, reclined back in the old chair with a blanket over his legs, is your grandfather.

Burdock is fast asleep too, or at least as close to asleep as that old body lets him get now. Jonathan crosses to him first, of course. He doesn’t even really think about doing it, just goes over to the hilarious old man he’s loved like his own grandfather since early childhood and begins checking everything in his space: checks the water glass, checks the tea that’s gone lukewarm on the side table, checks the medicine bottle with the label half-peeled and the cap set beside it. Then he adjusts the blanket up over Burdock’s old knees a little more carefully without waking him.

The old man’s hand is resting on his chest… like it always does when the breathing’s rougher. Even now, asleep, there’s pain in his face. Not dramatic pain. Not anything loud. Just that deeply tired kind. The kind that settles into a person and teaches their bones to carry it without complaint.

Jonathan’s jaw tightens.

His heart clenches, his throat burns.

Because this shouldn’t be happening either.

None of this should.

You should be here, not in there.

Burdock should have a real doctor. Healthcare shouldn’t be a memory that people talk about like it was some mythological golden age before the world turned to shit and stayed there.

And the bakery…

Jesus—

Jonathan’s gaze drifts once toward the kitchen before returning to the old man. The bakery is another thing altogether. Another quiet, gnawing splinter he can never quite leave alone. It makes money. It has to. People line up for bread every day — because what the hell else are they going to line up for in Hawkins now? Flour and yeast and one warm thing that still smells like life… that’s what. Because even with the economic collapse, bread on the table is still a vital necessity that keeps families fed and keeps well in freezers.

And yet somehow you have always been one skipped meal away from being worried sick about money for medicine.

Somehow Angelica always has reasons. 

“Explanations.” 

“Budgets.”

“Timing.”

And somehow Jonathan has never once believed a goddamn word of it.

He’s tried talking to you about it before. Carefully. Indirectly. Not wanting to push too hard because the last thing he’s ever wanted to do is make your life harder by making you choose between what you know and what you cannot bear to name.

You always give him that same soft, stubborn little answer.

That things were tight.   That you knew what was coming in.   That Angelica wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t cruel.

Jonathan had always wanted to say, pick one.

Instead he’s always bit it back.

Because that’s the thing about you. You don’t call somebody evil until you’ve stood in front of them with proof in both hands and no room left for grace and Jonathan has always been faster to the knife than you are.

That’s why you two worked.

That’s why you and him fit together the way you did.

You softened his worst edges, while he sharpened your grace and hesitation just enough to keep you from getting swallowed whole.

Now you’re gone.

Now he’s standing in a living room at three in the fucking morning, watching over the old man you’ve spent years trying to keep alive… with bread money and prayer and bones that never seemed built to stop.

“—but not everyone seems to be getting sleep tonight—”

Jonathan glances at the television right as the image cuts again.

Now it’s the older girl from District 5.

Syl.

She’s tucked beneath an enormous bed of leaves — not too far from the Cornucopia, buried in it so deeply that she almost looks like part of the forest floor itself. Only not quite. Not if you’re really looking. Not if you catch the twitch of her mouth every few seconds or the sharp, restless flick of her eyes beneath the dirt smudged over her pale skin. 

“—like a devil pixie in the night,” Claudius is saying, no doubt referring to her hair hair that’s been hacked into that severe little pixie cut.

The one swooping patch in front has been dyed some deep, eerie green that should’ve made her stand out way too much in the arena, should’ve looked stylishly reckless and theatrical… but now that it’s matted with sweat, grime, leaves and dust, it weirdly works. Makes her look a little feral. A little fungal. Like something sharp-edged and half-starved growing out of the forest itself.

“She’s made a clever choice in shelter,” Claudius is saying, voice warm with that awful polished fascination of his. “Close enough to observe. Far enough, perhaps, not to be immediately noticed.” Caesar hums beside him. “Though I do wonder how much longer District 5’s girl can tolerate the discomfort. Look there—see? She’s been flinching every few minutes now. Insects, I think. Or nerves. Perhaps both.”

Onscreen, Syl jerks suddenly, slapping at something that’s wormed beneath the leaves near her collarbone. Her whole face pinches with irritation so raw that it almost looks childish… before it hardens all over again into something meaner. Hungrier. Her lips move like she’s cussing at the dirt itself. Then she stills, eyes fixed toward the distant glint of the Cornucopia… like she might somehow will supplies into her own hands through sheer desperation.

Jonathan watches her for a second longer than he means to.

Because yeah, it’s ugly. It’s dark. And there’s no missing the truth of it. She’s spiraling. Hunger’s gotten in there. Sleep deprivation too. She hasn’t found shit to eat, hasn’t gotten her hands on a proper weapon yet, and now she’s tucked herself beneath leaves like some pissed-off little animal trying to hide from the world… while also inching closer to the one place most likely to kill her, because she worries that it’s still being guarded by a hidden Career.

It’s sad as hell.

It’s also the kind of thing that Caesar and Claudius are treating like character development instead of what it really is, which is a kid quietly starting to lose her mind on live television.

“God, man…” Jonathan barely murmurs under his breath, glancing down before the scene finally changes again.

“—and in the meantime, District 5’s boy and the little girl from seven are still safely tucked away in their own little cave,” Caesar’s saying, all crooned and fond.

Hannah and Jack fill the screen now.

Still in the cave, still tucked away with the branches and leaves covering the mouth of it — a little makeshift world hidden inside the bigger, crueler one.

The hosts are talking about them now in those low warm voices that almost make Jonathan want to put his fist through the screen.

“Remarkable,” Claudius sighs, “that the beautiful baker’s daughter managed to get them this far.” “She has a very unusual instinct for preservation,” Caesar agrees. “But one has to wonder how long that instinct can survive the reality of the game.”

Jonathan disdainfully mutters, “Shut the fuck up,” under his breath.

Because there they go again.

Talking like you’re not a person. Talking like you’re a trait. A phenomenon. A sweet little contradiction they can roll over on their serpent tongues, all while kids sleep in a cave you made safe for them.

He gives Burdock one last look.

Then straightens and heads for the window.

He heard it a minute ago, just beneath the TV noise... Something soft hissing against the glass panes. He peels back the curtain with two fingers and, sure enough, there it is.

Rain.

Not a thunderstorm yet. No lightning slicing up the sky like electric veins. No hard wind trying to pull the gutters off. Just rain. Steady, dreary and cold-looking. Outside, the front yard is a smudged dark watercolor of grass and mud and shadow. The old rusted swingset shifts once in the wind, the chains creaking faintly. One dim street lamp paints half the lawn in weak amber, leaving the other half to fend for itself in blackness.

Jonathan stands there a moment longer than he means to.

Just looking.

Because Hawkins at this hour always feels like something waiting to happen.

It’s never really gone back to being a town.

Not since Will vanished. Not since the sky tore.

Not since the ground cracked open and swallowed whole pieces of people’s lives.

Even now, even with rain and quiet and no thunder yet… there’s always that old reflex crawling up his spine. That doomed feeling that if he stares into the dark long enough, something impossible is going to stare back.

He lets the curtain fall shut and turns away.

On the television, the camera’s now back on Steve — high up in the tree, still sleeping — while Claudius is talking again. And Jonathan only half listens at first while crossing into the kitchen and pulling down the coffee tin, but then one phrase cuts through.

“Tracker jackers.”

He glances back over his shoulder.

Onscreen, they’ve got some discreet little angle through branches… showing the faint bulbous shape of the nest up above Steve’s head while the show’s hosts explain it all over again for late-night viewers just tuning in.

Capitol-bred mutation. Aggression response. Venom. Hallucinations. Pain. Panic. Potential lethality depending on exposure.

Jonathan’s face goes blank in that dangerous, signature Byers way while he pours grounds into the dated machine without taking his eyes fully off the TV.

Of course.

Of fucking course.

Because why just throw twenty-four kids into the woods with weapons when you could also engineer nightmare insects and hang them all over a sleeping boy’s head like a decorative threat?

The battered coffee pot starts its wet little gurgling life behind him as the feed changes again…

You and the Careers take the screen.

Jonathan leaves the chipped counter, moves back into the doorway between kitchen and living room… folding his arms across his chest and leaning there while he watches. It’s all low-lit and ugly in that grim way night in the arena seems to be.

The torches. The dead campfire. The damp grass. Tommy, Glimmer, Marvel and Carol arranged in their little pack formation like a nest of snakes pretending to be civilized... and you among them.

Not one of them, though.

That’s the thing.

You never look like one of them — even when you’re quiet enough to blend, even when you’re sitting still, even when you’re doing exactly what you need to do to stay alive.

You still don’t belong to that shape.

Jonathan knows it. He knows it the way he knows his own name. He knows the whole plan too — or enough of it, anyway... Knows you’ve been feeding Tommy exactly what he needs to hear every time he circles back to the same suspicion: the littles.

That’s what he calls them.

Hannah. Jack. Ro.

He knows you’ve managed, somehow, to take Tommy’s suspicion and turn it back toward Steve. Because that’s the smarter play. That’s the truer one too, which is part of what makes it so dangerous.

You haven’t had to invent a false weakness out of thin air.

You’ve just had to remind the Careers whose weakness the whole world has already watched on live television.

Steve volunteered for Dustin. Steve ran for the trees instead of the kill. Steve was the one they all wanted from the jump.

Of course the littles would cling to him.

Of course he’d hide them if he could.

And in letting Tommy Hagan believe that, you’ve kept his eyes off yourself… long enough to bury extra supplies in a cave and teach two scared kids how to survive one hour longer than they were supposed to get.

Jonathan watches all of that sit unspoken between the live feed, the hosts, the arena, and himself.

He also watches Marvel start to droop.

The boy looks wrecked now. Sleepy enough now that even his stupid pretty jock face can’t quite hide it anymore. He’s exhausted. He keeps pacing, then slowing, then pacing again. At one point he yawns so hard it almost seems to take his whole head with it.

Claudius chuckles. “District One may be learning that chivalry and vigilance are not, in fact, the same skill.”

Caesar hums. “Though one does admire the effort.”

Jonathan narrows his eyes.

Because he can already see where this is going. Marvel’s fading. Glimmer’s going to have to switch in. Tommy won’t volunteer. Of course he won’t. Carol would rather eat bark than offer first.

And you…

You’re still wrapped in that jacket Marvel gave you, tucked into your own little wedge of cold space near the torchlight… eyes half shut, body loose in that way people only go loose when they’re trying very hard to make themselves look less alert than they really are.

Marvel finally caves.

He goes over to Glimmer and nudges her awake with the toe of his boot.

At that exact moment, Joyce’s hushed voice fills the room.

“Jonathan?”

He turns.

She’s standing there in the hallway entrance in an oversized flannel, thrown over an old Benny’s Burgers t-shirt and sweatpants, hair sleep-mussed and face soft in the half-light. She looks tired in the bone-deep way she’s looked tired ever since life became a series of disasters separated by black coffee and determination.

“What’re you doing up?” she asks quietly.

He almost laughs. “Could ask you the same thing.”

Joyce gives him a look like don’t start.

Jonathan sighs and tips his chin toward the TV. “Couldn’t sleep.”

“Yeah,” she says softly. “No kidding.”

She comes to stand beside her son — and for a second neither of them says anything. They just watch the television screen together as Glimmer drags herself upright, blinking meanly into consciousness while Marvel looks one second away from falling over where he stands.

Tommy doesn’t wake.

Doesn’t even twitch.

Just keeps sleeping beside Glimmer like an asshole with perfect confidence that everybody else will keep the night from touching him.

Joyce stares at him with open dislike. “I hate him.”

Jonathan almost smiles. “That narrows it down.”

“Shut up.”

“He looks like he’d lose a fight to a folding chair in a frat house.”

Joyce snorts once, tired and genuine.

Onscreen, Marvel hovers for a second like he’s debating whether to reclaim the jacket from your shoulders. But he doesn’t. Instead he goes and grabs the extra sleeping bag from Glimmer, since she’ll not be needing it while on night watch. She almost scoffs at him with a bratty sense of offense, but he’s already yawning his way back in your direction.

“…oh he better not,” Jonathan murmurs, dangerously low, glaring at Marvel’s image as he saunters back towards you.

Joyce has gone just as rigid as he is, her mama-bear instincts kicking in.

“He does, we’ll both need a helicopter,” she mutters gravely.

But they watch Marvel opt out of disturbing your peace, choosing not to be a slimy asshole that tries to sidle up beside you in your sleep. 

Jonathan and Joyce both catch it at the same time.

The moment he consciously decides, nah… that’d be fucked up.

They stare at the screen for another handful of tense seconds, watching him finally slump down with the bag pulled over him while you keep his jacket… and the absurd, ridiculous little grace of that aspect also takes them both by surprise. Not enough to quite ease their unwavering protectiveness of you. Not enough to make Marvel good. Not enough to make Jonathan forget what alliance the boy is in or what he’d do if ordered. But human enough to sting.

Enough to make them breathe again.

Joyce folds her arms. “Well.”

Jonathan hums.

“Well,” she repeats, side-eyeing the television. “That’s… something.”

“He’s got it bad.”

Joyce turns to look at him. “You think?”

“He gave up the jacket and a cuddle buddy.”

“She could still kill him.”

Jonathan’s gaze remains fixed on your sleeping form, just a mere three or so yards away from where Marvel’s now turning over once into his side, before letting sleep consume him. 

He sigh through his nose. “Yeah,” he says. “But she won’t.”

Joyce doesn’t argue.

Because she knows you too. Knows the shape of your kindness. Knows the ways it survives even when survival says it shouldn’t. Knows, too, that if you ever did kill somebody in there it would only be because the universe left you no other road.

The feed changes again…

Ro’s image now fills the screen.

He’s asleep, still high up in the fork of his tree, swallowed by his oversized jacket and the dark itself. He looks so small up there that it almost doesn’t register as real. More like a bundle of camping 

cloth caught in branches than an actual little person trying to live through the night.

Joyce’s whole expression shifts.

That deep mother-pain thing comes over her.

She looks away first.

“Coffee?” Jonathan asks quietly.

“Please.”

They move into the kitchen together.

The smell of brewing coffee has thickened now — warm and bitter and sharp enough to almost feel medicinal. Jonathan reaches for mugs automatically while Joyce leans against the counter and drags one hand over her face.

They drink it black, both of them.

Like two people who started doing things without sugar a long time ago and forgot they ever hated it.

For a minute they talk about absolutely nothing important. Whether the roof over the back room is still leaking. Whether Donald’s gonna short Joyce on hours again and pretend it’s inventory. Whether there’s enough oatmeal left. Whether Jonathan ought to head into the market first thing… before the rain really gets bad and people clear the vendors out of anything decent.

It’s the kind of conversation people have when the real conversation is too big to touch directly without blowing a hole in the room.

Eventually Joyce says, “I can take Will over to Steve’s later.”

Jonathan is already shaking his head before she finishes. “No, I’ve got it.”

She lifts a brow. “You do?”

“Yeah. I’m headed to the market anyway.”

“I don’t work till noon today,” she reminds him curiously. “That’s plenty of time for him to sleep more, before I take him there then circle back—”

“No need,” Jonathan softly cuts in, shakes his head. “Really. I’ll just take him after I get back with groceries and more bread. Before you leave for work.”

His mother looks at him for a beat.

Then slowly nods, lips pursed coyly. 

Because now, it's clicking.

“Mhm.”

He knows that sound.

He lowkey hates that sound.

Jonathan glares into his mug. “What.”

“Nothing.”

“Mom.”

Joyce takes a sip and very carefully does her best not to smile. “You’re just awfully eager to drive across town.”

His ears go hot immediately. “Will wants to be there.”

“I’m sure he does.”

“And Burdock’ll still need someone here.”

“Which would be you.”

“Right, but—”

“But Nancy Wheeler would also happen to be at Steve Harrington’s house.”

Jonathan goes very still.

Then, because it’s his mother and she’s known how to read her oldest son’s silences since before he knew what love was, he pathetically mutters, “That’s not the point.”

Joyce, saint that she is, still keeps her face (nearly) straight. “No,” she faintly drawls. “Totally.”

He glares harder into the coffee.

She loses the battle with the corner of her mouth for half a second and then mercifully turns away toward the window before it becomes a whole thing.

Rain patters harder now against the glass.

Jonathan follows her gaze. “I should go early.”

“You should.”

“Maybe six-thirty.”

“Mm.”

“Get the market before it’s picked clean.”

“And the bakery.”

That lands heavier.

Jonathan nods once. “Yeah.”

Because somebody has to keep it going.

Even in your absence. Especially in your absence.

He doesn’t say that out loud.

Doesn’t have to.

Joyce knows. He knows she knows.

And they both know the warmth inside Everlark Bakery has only remained in place, because of you. After Peeta’s passing eight years ago, your father left his kind spirit, warm soul and heart for others with you… and you’ve carried it all for him ever since, regardless of the grief.

Which is why Jonathan will always keep checking in and volunteering himself for shifts in exchange for a fresh load of bread, whenever his mom isn't scheduled at work.

Jonathan thinks how fiercely your grandfather needs proper care.

Joyce thinks about how badly she wants to rob a bank to make it possible.

And behind them, from the TV in the other room — Caesar and Claudius are still talking. Still narrating. Still softly exhaling their little delighted horror over every move the arena makes.

Jonathan hears one line clear as he sets down his mug...

“Of course,” Claudius is saying, “the tracker jackers remain perhaps our most intriguing late-night complication.”

Jonathan closes his eyes.

Intriguing.

Sure. That’s one word for biological warfare.

He rubs at the back of his neck, then reaches over and twists the little radio dial on the kitchen set until he finds the weather forecast through a crackly hiss of static. If they can’t have a moment of silence, at least they can have one more practical piece of information to pin to the day ahead.

The local forecast crackles in.

Heavy rains through the next several days. Possible thunderstorms later in the week. Cooler temperatures overnight. Road flooding in some lower areas if the downpour keeps up.

Jonathan listens and absorbs with half his mind while the other half keeps on running inventory…

Market. Bakery. Coffee. Medicine. Will. Burdock. Nancy. You.

...always you.

…and Steve too, whether he wants to admit the full shape of that or not.

Because Steve Harrington might not be his best friend. Might not even be his friend in the easy, ordinary sense.

But he’s your heartsong. And he’s Will’s local hero. And he’s become something like necessary to the shape of Hawkins whether anybody says it plainly or not.

So Jonathan can sit with that.

Can sit with all of it.

The girl he misses like family and more than family too. The boy she’s risking everything for. The old man wilting in the next room. The old love he’s never said aloud since grade school, for Nancy Wheeler. And the little brother who deserves one damn day of feeling like a kid, even if that kid is still going to spend it in front of a television… praying other people survive.

Joyce finishes her coffee first and looks back toward the living room. “I don’t want him here all day,” she says quietly.

Jonathan nods. “I know...”

“He’ll just keep worrying.”

“I know.”

“I want him with his friends.”

He gives a tired little smile. “Yeah. Me too.”

She exhales, long and low, then glances toward the hallway where Will still sleeps on the couch beyond it. “Take him over later,” she says. “After the market. Before the bakery.”

Jonathan nods again. “I will.”

Joyce turns toward the sink, then stops. Looks out the window once more at the rain. And her oldest son watches her mouth move in the glass reflection before he even hears the words…

A prayer.

For you.

For Steve, too. For all of them, maybe. For the world. For impossible things.

He doesn’t interrupt it.

Doesn’t mock it either, even in his own head.

Because Joyce Byers has been defying all the odds since the day the world tried to take her son and found out too late that she bites back.

And if there is anyone in Hawkins stubborn enough to stare down a rigged game, a supernatural apocalypse, national grief, corrupt government, class cruelty, a broken healthcare system, a rainstorm, and God Himself… and still say no, I don’t accept those terms—

Well, then it’s her.

So Jonathan lets her pray.

Lets the radio mutter weather into the kitchen. Lets the coffee steam. Lets the old TV in the living room keep murmuring about tracker jackers and sleeping killers and “the beautiful baker’s daughter” wrapped in somebody else’s jacket beneath a torchlight. Lets the weathered house breathe around them in its old familiar aches.

And when Joyce finally opens her eyes and looks back at him again, there is nothing soft about the certainty in them.

She doesn’t say, maybe. She doesn’t say, hopefully.

She just says, quiet as scripture and twice as unshakable:

“They’re coming home.”

And Jonathan — tired, in love, rain-soaked in the soul, standing barefoot in a kitchen at almost four in the morning while the whole world loses its mind over a game built to break children… believes her. Because Joyce Byers has been beating impossible odds ever since “impossible” had the nerve to say her family’s name.

And if impossible wants another fight, well.

It can get in line.

Steve wakes up slow enough this time to know he is waking up.

Not all at once like a gunshot under the skin. Not with some whispered pssst or the anthem or a blood-curdling scream or the sudden, animalistic certainty that something with claws has found him in the dark. Just gradually. Like his body is surfacing before the rest of him does.

He feels the envelopment of the sleeping bag first — the stale trapped heat inside it, the rough drag of the fabric against his wrist, the slight pull of the cord still looped around him and the tree trunk so he does not tumble to his death in his sleep like some dumbass sack of potatoes. Then comes the pressure of bark against his shoulder blades. Then the awkward kink in his neck. Then the sharp little protest of muscles he should not have used so hard yesterday and did anyway because apparently the arena is a hostile work environment and no one here gives out sick days.

Steve peels back the sleeping bag carefully.

The sky above him is still indigo.

Not black anymore, no longer night.

But not yet morning either.

It’s that peculiar in-between hour where the world feels like it’s still holding its breath. The moon is faint now, thinning into nothing, and the horizon has just barely started to bruise at the edges with wispy, sherbet colored streaks that promise sunrise without fully delivering it yet.

Good.

That’s good.

That means he’s got a little time.

Not much. But a little.

He props himself up on one elbow and immediately looks down… Below, the makeshift campsite at the base of the tall trees looks exactly like what it is:temporary nest made by a pack of arrogant assholes who got a little too comfortable.

No one is on watch.

Not one of them.

Carol is still curled beneath that pathetic scrap of tarp, all sharp little elbows and snake-bite energy… even in her sleep. Marvel is half starfished with one forearm flung over his eyes, the sleeping bag barely hanging onto him at this point. You’re still at the base of that broader trunk just a little ways off, tucked beneath Marvel’s windbreaker with your own still clinging your frame, looking peaceful enough to make him uneasy on principle. Tommy’s now flat on his stomach atop the thin sleeping bag like a deadweight slab of meat.

And Glimmer…

Steve blinks.

Because there she is — the girl he saw pacing circles last night like she was very committed to the art of pretending she gave a shit, after Marvel tapped out… now absolutely passed the fuck out and curled against Tommy’s side, like some exhausted little cat.

And yeah.

The silver bow is still in her hands.

Bitch.

Steve arches one brow. Welp, looks like the night watch girl got sleepy. Not exactly a shock. But still. Good to know the kingdom of assholes is protected by a beauty queen with the stamina of a dying iPod battery.

That snarky thought only gets about one second to live before the rest of him catches up...

Because they’re asleep.

All of them.

Every single one.

And that realization slams into his chest with enough force to make his pulse jump.

Oh, shit. Oh shit, this is it. This is it.

This is the window.

He has to move.

Now.

So he starts easing himself out of the sleeping bag, careful with every inch, careful with the wound up cord, careful with the branches under him, careful with the backpack hooked nearby—

And then he pauses.

Because something is wrong.

Or rather…

Something is missing.

Steve freezes halfway out of the bag and frowns down at himself.

The throbbing.

The constant ugly hot ache in his thigh.

It’s… not there.

Not gone-gone, not completely. But absent enough to feel unreal.

He warily finishes slipping one leg free, shifts carefully, expecting the usual white-hot protest…

Nothing.

Well. Not nothing. But close enough that his eyes go wide.

Steve gets his injured leg free and stares down at his upper thigh…

And there it is.

The burn.

Except it doesn’t look like the same wound.

Yesterday it looked like somebody had torched him and left him to marinate in it. Yesterday it looked wet, raw and ugly and furious, like grilled chicken if grilled chicken had decided to hate him personally.

Now?

Now it’s pink.

Baby-soft pink.

Still a bit angry around the edges, still unmistakably a burn, still on track to scar the absolute shit out of him, but holy fuck. It looks like something that should’ve taken weeks to get here. Not a handful of hours. Not one night or one tiny silver tin of healing balm that dropped out of the sky like a bribe from God.

Steve just stares at it for a moment.

His brows lift higher and higher, his mouth parts a little…

He almost laughs.

He actually almost laughs. Not because anything here is funny. Nothing here is funny. But because holy shit. Holy fucking shit!

It worked.

It really worked.

He glances up at the sky without meaning to — some weird little wordless acknowledgment that is not gratitude exactly because fuck these people and their pompous sponsor culture and their little silver parachutes and the fact that they can apparently heal a burn overnight if enough rich weirdos decide they want to keep watching your face on television.

But still.

He knows everybody back home is gonna see it.

Dustin. Lucas. Mike. Will. Erica. Eddie. Nancy.

Hopper too, back at the Capitol.

That’s what matters.

That they’ll see he’s okay.

That he’s not rotting alive up here.

That the leg isn’t gonna be the thing that takes him out.

So before he does anything else, Steve reaches back into the backpack and grabs the balm again — then, very carefully swipes another generous layer over the healing burn. It’s cool. Slick. Almost stupidly soothing. He hisses once on reflex, then lets the relief settle in.

There’s still plenty left in the tin too.

Which, honestly?

Sick. Sick as hell.

If the arena decides to throw another fun little disaster his way today — and, statistically, it will — maybe this shit’ll save his ass twice.

“Bless whatever freak sent this,” he mutters under his breath, and then very nearly presses a kiss to the tin before catching himself and deciding no, that would be too humiliating even by his current standards.

He settles for shoving it back in the backpack like it’s precious cargo. Then he stuffs the cord and sleeping bag in too, securing everything tight because the second that nest goes down, he is going to have to run like hell.

And there it is.

The shift.

The moment where everything inside him starts to build.

Anticipation first.

Then nerves.

Then adrenaline, creeping up inch by inch under the skin.

Because now it’s real.

Now he’s doing this.

Steve pulls the backpack over his shoulders again and starts climbing just a little higher up the tree. Not enough to be stupid about it. Just enough to get into position where he can stretch and work at the branch. As he moves, he catches the horizon again. The sky’s brighter now, all sherbet and peach and cold purple.

It’s now or never.

That reality comes with its own ugly set of teeth. Because there’s no damn guarantee this’ll work. No guarantee the nest actually falls where he needs it to. No guarantee that any of them will wake up, no guarantee he doesn’t get swarmed himself. 

No guarantee that if it works… it doesn’t hurt you too.

And because apparently his brain is a petty little asshole with perfect timing, what floats up next is your voice from yesterday, all soft and matter-of-fact and infuriating.

Maybe take a shit.

Steve grimaces into the bark.

Nope. Absolutely not. He refuses to die thinking about bowel movements or your random little comment about them while deflecting Tommy’s commands to get the hell up the tree.

“Jesus,” in subsidy mutters to himself, shaking his thoughts away as he gets the knife out… then immediately turns toward the neighboring tree.

Ro.

He needs to warn Ro.

Steve’s brown eyes search for his shape… but he can’t see him at first. That shouldn’t surprise him. The kid’s basically become folklore at this point.

So he squints into the branches, peering through the shadows, then flicks his gaze down to the camp below… and back up again before he finally dares to very quietly, very cautiously call out in a hushed tone—

“...Ro.”

Two round eyes blinking awake.

A small shape begins uncurling.

And then that sleepy little smile forms.

It hits Steve straight in the chest as he watches Ro sit up — all quiet mouse movements and no wasted motion before gesturing towards the nest again. Steve nods immediately and lifts the knife, miming the sawing motion.

Ro understands right away.

Of course he does.

That smart little lad.

He nods. Peers down below once. Then looks back at Steve and salutes him with absurd solemnity, like some tiny tree-born soldier in the dead of dawn.

Steve feels a grin tug at his mouth before he can stop it.

He winks and salutes back with two fingers.

Then Ro turns…

…and Steve’s grin vanishes into outright astonishment.

Because Ro doesn’t climb down. He doesn’t slowly work his way around the trunk and disappear into lower branches.

No.

The little shit just… leaps.

Ro flies.

Straight from one tree to another.

Silent. Clean. Effortless. Like a baby squirrel launched from a slingshot.

Steve goes completely still.

What the actual fuck…?

Ro lands into the neighboring tree with barely so much as a rustle. He grips, adjusts, then vanishes into another pocket of leaves like he’s been doing this all his life.

Maybe he has.

Maybe that’s exactly what he showed in training and nobody fucking noticed because they were all too busy watching bigger kids swing bigger weapons and peacock for the cameras.

Maybe Seneca Crane and his band of overpaid psychopaths all know exactly what Ro can do.

Or maybe they missed it too.

Either way, Steve is absolutely blown away. Because this kid was likely doing that in the training center the whole damn week — probably slipping around above the rafters like a tiny ghost monkey while the rest of them were down on the mats pretending none of this was real yet.

He watches Ro disappear into another tree… and then forces himself to look away, because as incredible as that is, he has bigger problems.

He looks back down at the camp.

You’re still there.

Still draped in Marvel’s jacket.

Still asleep, as far as he can tell.

…and now all he can think about is where this cursed branch is going to fall. How close it’ll land. How far the swarm will spread. Whether you’ll be caught in it. Whether he should try to warn you somehow. Whether he even can.

He can’t.

Not without waking everyone else.

So he swallows hard, flexes his jaw, and tips his face back toward the nest.

One of the little papery gray shell’s openings twitches.

Something moves inside.

A slash of vicious yellow.

Steve’s blood goes cold at the sight.

Nope, he mentally scolds himself. Nope, nope, nope.

He looks away fast and gets to work. The blade of his knife finds yesterday’s groove almost immediately.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

At first he’s too careful and he knows it. Too light-handed, too hesitant, not trusting the noise, not trusting the timing, not trusting his own luck. Which is why he picks up the pace. Back and forth, back and forth, back and forth!—

Then he hears movement inside the nest.

A low angry buzzing...

And whatever caution he’s got left burns off in a second.

Faster.

He needs to go faster.

So he fucking gives it faster. Back and forth! Back and forth! BACK AND FORTH!—  the knife rasps hard over the thick wood. His arm works in harsh, repeated strokes. The branch shakes. The nest above it trembles with each pull.

Steve keeps glancing down even though he knows he shouldn’t. He can’t help it. Every few seconds his eyes dart toward you, toward Tommy, toward Glimmer with the bow, toward Carol’s tarp, toward Marvel’s starfished form. 

Nobody’s moving.

Nobody’s waking.

…but what he doesn’t know?

What he cannot know from up there…

…is that you are not asleep at all.

That you have one eye barely cracked. Because you see Ro moving through the upper branches like a signal fire no one else can read. And you’re catching his urgent gestures, directed at you — Move, lostgirl! We gotta fly! — that you look up just enough to see Steve working at the branch. That you do not see the way he keeps glancing down at you with worry biting the edges of every movement.

All Steve knows is he’s gotta get this branch sawed off. 

All you know is that something’s coming.

So very, very carefully, you begin to shift.

An inch...

Then another...

Still flat on your back, hidden by the jacket and the dimness and the stupidity of the people around you… You start easing your lithe body in the opposite direction, rounding yourself slowly around the broader trunk… just enough to gain distance without making noise.

Back up in the tree, Steve’s sawing like a madman with a gun to his head.

He’s almost there.

Almost—

Pain detonates in his forearm.

Sharp.

Sudden.

White-hot.

Steve jolts — so hard that he nearly gasps out loud. His whole body curls in on instinct, the knife jerking with him.

A sting.

Something stung him.

“Fuck—”

It barely makes it out as a wheezed breath. And then before the word is even done, another sting spears into his knee, and another jabs into his neck.

He sees stars.

Actually sees fucking stars.

Second start to the right! Straight on till morning!

—why the fuck is Peter Pan inside his head?!

Doesn’t matter, whatever—he cannot stop.

He cannot stop now.

So he grits through it and keeps sawing, ferociously now, every stroke faster and uglier than the one before it… while above him the nest erupts in furious life. The holes along its papery shell now writhe with yellow motion. Buzzing rises. The whole thing seems to pulse with malice.

Then the branch finally snaps.

Steve doesn’t think.

He just shoves.

He shoves the whole fucking thing as far away from himself as possible with a now audible grunt because fuck it—

The whole goddamn thing tears loose and drops.

Falling.

Falling.

Falling.

Snagging on smaller branches on the way down, jolting and cracking and sending up a frenzied screaming buzz—

And then it hits the ground below and explodes.

All hell follows.

Pandemonium ensues. 

Everybody wakes at once. Tommy jerks upright with a snarl as Carol lurches out from under the tarp. Marvel shoots up, half awake and already swatting blindly. Glimmer startles last, disoriented and way too slow.

And you’re already moving.

Already shouting at the top of your lungs, “Run—run! To the lake! LAKE!”

You bolt.

Tommy and Carol are the first to really make it happen. There’s no hesitation there, no separate instincts fighting for dominance or passive aggressive act now. Tommy literally yanks Carol up by the arm and hauls ass with her at his side while they both slap and swat at the tracker jackers now exploding into the dawn air like shiny yellow bullets. Suddenly they’re a team again — ugly and feral and fast.

“Fuck—WHAT’S—GO GO GO—!”

Marvel barely gets clear in time. 

The swarm catches at him, stings him, tangles in his hair and clothes, but he barrels away anyway with panicked jock strength and pure survival terror.

You, of course, had the head start.

By now, you’ve sprinted far enough to get out of the immediate blast radius, and then — in the midst of total confusion consuming everybody, else losing their goddamn minds — you mount a tree and climb.

Fast.

Graceful.

Gone.

The four of you are getting ahead of the swarm.

But Glimmer doesn’t get that chance.

Because she wakes last.

That’s all it is. A few seconds too late. A few confused blinks too long. Just enough delay for the whole fury of the tracker jackers to choose her instead of open space.

And choose her, they do.

They descend on her like punishment. What comes out of her mouth next is not one scream. It’s several. It’s shrieking and screeching and throat-tearing panic all at once. She hastily flails on the ground — thrashing so violently it looks inhumane, the silver bow falling from her hands as the deadly insects cover her and sting and sting and sting.

Steve clings to the branch above, breathing through his teeth, because his forearm is burning now, his knee is burning, and his head—?

His head is starting to do something bad.

He can feel it already.

The edges of the world have gone wrong.

But down below Glimmer is dying in fast, grotesque motion. All of her limbs jackknife. Her back arches. Her voice breaks itself open on the way out until the screams warp into wet, ruined sounds and then finally to nothing.

The tracker jackers peel away eventually.

Their rage spent.

Their swarm breaks and vanishes through the trees in a terrible yellow cloud, disappearing as fast as it came.

Glimmer does not move again.

But Steve moves.

Because he doesn’t have time not to move.

He starts climbing down as fast as he dares. The sting on his neck now joins the others, somewhere along the way, hot and vile, and the whole tree feels wrong underneath his hands. The bark almost… swims in and out of focus. The ground seems too far away and then suddenly not far enough.

But the bow is down there.

The arrows too.

He needs them. So he hits the ground — half stumbling, vision already going strange — and heads straight for Glimmer’s body.

That’s when the nightmare really starts.

Because up close she doesn’t look dead.

She looks cursed.

Like a cruel little blonde bombshell from some evil fairytale who got caught mid-transformation and never turned back. Her skin is swollen and bubbled and shiny in all the wrong ways. Her usually beautiful features have warped, puffed out, twisted. Her eyes are sunken into the ruin of her face. Green pus and ooze seep from dozens of stings… like she’s leaking poison from every pore.

It’s grotesque.

It’s vile.

It's almost beautiful in the way nightmares are — too detailed, too wrong, too vivid to ever scrub off the inside of your eyelids.

Steve feels nausea rise so fast it nearly folds him. “Stay ffffocused,” he hears himself slur. “Stay focused, st’focused, stay f’ccc’sssddd—”

He drops to his knees beside her anyway.

The silver bow is still half caught in her hand—fuck, except her hand is now swollen so badly it barely looks like a hand anymore.

Getting it free is awful.

He has to pry fingers back one by one, skin slick and hot and bloated…trying not to think about the way her flesh gives under his grip. The whole world around him has already started bending at the edges now, his vision splitting and refracting until everything looks like it’s being viewed through a busted prism.

He gets the bow.

Then the arrows.

Or rather, he has to roll her enough to get the quiver from where it’s pinned beneath her twisted body, and that’s somehow worse. Everything about this is worse. Her blonde hair is full of dirt and venom and leaves. Her clothes are damp with sweat and poison and whatever the hell else the tracker jackers squeezed out of her. It feels like he’s moving through maple syrup, through a dream, through the thick middle of a bad drug trip.

At one point he actually pauses, blinking hard, because he cannot tell if he is still touching her or if the ground itself is moving.

“Come on,” he mutters hoarsely to no one. “C’mmmon—crr’mon—”

Finally the strap comes free.

Steve has the arrows.

Steve has the bow.

He gets to his feet—

And the whole world tilts…

Left and right stop meaning anything. The trees around him all ripple. The ground heaves. Colors fracture and split and smear into each other. Dawn light turns weird and glassy and wrong until everything looks kaleidoscoped, like some asshole shattered reality and handed him only the prettiest pieces.

Steve sways.

He’s got the bow in one hand, the arrows in the other… and suddenly he has no idea what to do next.

Run?

Left?

Right?

Climb?

Lie down?

Maybe he should just sit down.

Maybe he should just take a quick little arena nap right here in the poison dirt next to dead Glimmer Belcourt and let the world do what it wants.

He can feel himself going.

He can.

And if this is it—? If this is the part where the tracker jackers got him and his brain is already melting its way out—

Then he hopes Ro made it.

Truly. He hopes that kid makes it all the way to the end and wins the whole goddamn thing just to spite everyone.

Then he hears a cannon fire.

Oh yeah, he’s dead.

Or no—

Wait.

No, that’s not right.

Because now he’s stumbling backwards as heavy gusts of air whoosh down from above, all around him, parting the leaves and twigs and earth… until the giant claw of the hovercraft encloses Glimmer’s mutilated body, lifting her off the forest floor.

“…the-ffffff—uh….?”

So if the canon isn’t for him…

…and if he’s still here…

“—eve…”

Steve blinks over and over, his senses spiraling.

“—teve…”

That’s a voice.

That’s someone shouting his name.

“—Steve?!”

And all at once he is sure, absolutely sure, that it’s Robin.

Of course it’s Robin. 

Who else would be here, yelling at him like that? Who else would sound that pissed off and scared and familiar all at once? And well, if he’s hearing Robin then that’s…that’s it, right? That’s curtains. End credits. Done. He crossed over somewhere between the stings and the dead pageant queen and pried- off bow and arrows. Maybe he got stung to death and just doesn’t remember. Maybe he got decapitated by a tribute hidden in the shadows and the Capitol is being weird about the reveal. Hard to say.

But then the shape that’s barreling toward him through the fractured trees of the arena forest gets closer…

Closer.

Closer.

…and Robin would not have your hair.

Robin would not have your face.

Robin would not be hauling ass toward him like an angel in a panic attack.

It’s you.

It’s you.

And you are screaming his name.

“STEVE!”

The word still comes distorted at first, dragged through the prism of Steve’s fucked-up head, but then you are right there, right in front of him, all beautiful and frenzied and real. Your braid has come half undone. Copper-glossed hair flies wild around your face. Your eyes are huge — far wider than he has ever seen them — full of fury and fear and desperate, furious life.

“What are you doing—?!”

He just stares at you.

Because what else is he supposed to do?

You get in his face, grab him by the shoulders and shake him hard enough to rattle the whole broken kaleidoscope of him.

“Steve, Steve—the hell are you still doing here?!” you shout manically. “You have to go—you’ve gotta go now, you’ve gotta run!”

He blinks at you.

Still not understanding.

Still trying so hard to make his eyes work.

Your face keeps splitting in two and then three and then one again.

You shake him harder.

“Run!” you practically scream. “Run, run, run—RUN! GO!”

And somehow…?

Somehow that gets through.

“GO!!!!”

Somewhere beneath the venom, the spinning world, the acid-trip colors and the fact that for one insane second he really believed that he was dead and Robin was calling him home—

Somewhere beneath all that, his body hears you.

And obeys.

Just as someone else’s looming shadow now begins stumbling towards him, still too far off to make out who it is but not far enough away keep from being a threat.

You yank him forward.

Then shove him farther.

He stumbles once.

Then catches.

Then runs.

Steve Harrington runs with the bow clutched wrong and the arrows banging against his side and you dragging him off in some direction he cannot map… until he’s running solo. He runs because you told him to. He runs because your hands were on him and that made it real again. He runs because stopping would mean thinking and thinking would mean dying.

And the hallucinations kick the rest of the way in.

The forest warps around him.

One tree balloons into the shape of his giant house back in Hawkins — the barricaded one from the Purge night, all boards and bars and false promises of safety — except then it stretches higher, higher, higher, until it is tall as the Empire State Building and just as impossible.

And then it bursts.

Not into flame.

Not into splinters.

Into a million butterflies.

“—wha—?”

He thinks that’s his voice.

He hears another voice shouting.

He hears crows cawing, sees vultures flying overhead, circling him.

Then the tall trees around him transform, melting, evaporating into blood and guts, splashing down across the forest floor and over his combat boots.

He sees ants. Clusters of ants, all crawling out of his knee that’s been stung. The blisters on his hands. The beds of his nails. And he can’t—fuck, he can’t swat them away.

Someone screams.

Never breaking for breath.

He’s pretty sure that’s himself.

And then he’s positive it’s him. He’s actually screaming. Not full-throated. Not elegant. Just some awful, ragged sound torn out of him all while he stumbles forward with the silver bow held all wrong across his chest and the arrows smacking his hip hard enough to bruise.

Because the sting on his knee has turned into a crater.

Because the welt on his neck feels like there is something alive beneath the skin, wriggling, boring down, laying eggs in his bloodstream.

Because the venom is doing exactly what it was bred to do and doing it well.

Steve all but falls into a skid of morning-dewed wet leaves and dirt, hits one knee, and immediately starts clawing at the other. That tracker jacker sting on his knee is no longer just a sting.

Now it’s a wound the size of Indiana.

Now it’s a nest unto itself.

Now it’s open and wet and bubbling and—swarming with little black ants and red ants and pale horrible things with too many legs climbing out from under his kneecap, spilling down his shin, disappearing into his sock.

“No—no, no, no—”

He jams the bow beneath one arm, fumbles for the stinger, then finds it with shaking fingers and yanks it out hard enough to make himself hiss so sharply it almost whistles. Then he gets the one in his neck too, clawing it free while the whole world bends sideways around him.

The wounds ooze.

At least in his head they do.

The real venom dribbles in little shining beads. But the hallucinated version of it turns into foam, then pus, then a yellow froth bubbling over his skin like something inside him has gone rotten in real time.

He slaps at it.

Slaps at his neck.

Slaps at his knee.

Slaps at his own hands because now there are fleas there now, tiny black jumping specks all over his knuckles, in the creases of his palms, beneath the crescents of his nails.

“Oh, fuck, oh, fuck—get off—get off!!!—”

Steve topples all the way down now… shoulder hitting the forest floor, leaves flying up around him as he rolls and thrashes and smacks at his own leg like a man trying to beat fire out with his bare hands.

But it’s not fire.

It’s worse.

Because fire at least makes sense.

This is madness in a skin suit.

And then, through the rushing static in his head, comes a voice.

“Run, boy. Run.”

Steve freezes.

Not to where he stops trembling like a frantic psyche ward patient— he’s still panting. Still clawing at his knee with one hand. Still half-curled on the forest floor with the bow jammed awkwardly beneath him. But every muscle in his body locks around that voice.

Because he knows that voice…

He knows it better than his own.

Slowly, wildly, frantically, he looks up…

Nothing is clear. Everything is broken glass, haze and color smeared wrong. The arena forest is still bending in and out of shape. The trunks breathe. The leaves pulse. The shadows look stained with blood and guts.

But the man’s voice comes again.

“Run, boy, run.”

This time it’s closer.

This time it’s to his left.

LEFT, DINGUS!

Steve turns so fast he almost gives himself whiplash and sees the sky first.

There are giant crows overhead.

No.

Not crows.

Vultures.

…no.

Not vultures either.

Something worse than birds — all fangs, black wings and hooked beaks and red eyes, circling lower and lower as if he is already on the ground dead and they are just waiting for the body to catch up to the fact of it so they can feast on his carcass.

Steve covers his face with both arms. “Get the FUCK AWAY FROM ME—!”

Wings beat overhead.

The air shakes.

He feels the drag of them.

Feels the shadow of them passing over him—

And then hands are grabbing him.

Gentle hands.

Familiar hands.

Hauling him upright.

And his dead mother’s voice cuts in, shrill and terrified, somehow still gentle all at once…

“Run, baby—RUN!”

Steve’s head whips around.

And there they are.

His parents.

Running beside him.

They’re not standing still in some noble vision from the beyond. Not glowing and saintly and pristine. No. They are running. Running the way people run when they are still in danger. Running the way they should not have had to. Running through the trees like all of this is happening again.

His father on one side.

His mother on the other.

Ethan Harrington is still handsome even in ruin. Dark hair gone mussed and damp with sweat. Blood down one side of his temple. Shirt half torn open at the collar. The same face that used to glance down over newspapers, stock reports and evening scotch… now cut open by terror and urgency and some horrible paternal command that looks almost exactly like Steve’s whenever he’s protecting the kids while the world is ending.

Mary Harrington is on the other side with her cropped raven hair wild around her face, pale skin streaked with dirt and blood… like someone reached into her memory and dragged her out before they had time to clean her up for the afterlife.

They are both looking at him.

They are both alive?

They are both dead?

—and Steve cannot make any of those facts argue with each other, because the trackerjacker venom has gotten too far into his brain now and everything inside of him has turned to broken mirrors.

“Don’t stop,” Ethan barks.

“Keep going,” Mary cries.

Steve does.

He runs like a hunted human with his dead parents flanking him and vultures overhead and the silver bow banging against his ribs and the sleek arrows knocking his spine every other stride. His knee still feels full of ants. His neck still feels split open. The forest is a kaleidoscope.

He sees the masked intruders between the trees.

The same ones from the Purge.

The woman in the pale dress…

In that mask.

Holding that knife.

And now she’s running at him with her head tilted wrong, nightgown dragging over leaves, blade high in one hand, shrieking like a banshee.

Just like from memory.

Except she’s… here now.

She’s back and out for blood and Steve screams and swings his own knife with every ounce of feral force in him.

The blade goes through her.

Not flesh.

Just air.

The whole figure vanishes like smoke with a face.

He barely gets a second to process it because there is another one.

The younger cult-leader fellow with the machine gun.

Mask on.

Sprint full tilt.

Weapon raised.

—and Steve barrels into him too, slashing hard and ugly and blind, with a guttural sound tearing up out of him as he does.

The man vanishes just like the other masked figure did.

Poof.

Gone.

Nothing.

Just another physical memory made visible and then stripped away.

They weren’t actually here inside the arena… but once upon a time ago, they were real. And that is apparently all the venom needs to know in order to gift Steve’s trauma the ability to reimagine surviving them all over again.

A wounded cry escapes his lips—

—just before he trips over a root.

He slams hard into the ground again.

Rolls.

Looks up.

And sees demobats.

A whole fucking flock of them.

Not tracker jackers now, not birds. Not hallucinated vultures. Demobats. Real as the ones he watched spill out of the dark over Hawkins with their needles for teeth and ripped wings and mangy, starving hate.

They dive.

One catches his throat with its tail and he feels it coil there — strangling him, squeezing, tightening.

Steve shrieks and claws at his own neck.

Two more pierce into his stomach.

He feels their teeth dig in.

Feels them rip his shirt open.

Feels hot blood bloom across his abdomen as one chews and another tears, all while he’s twisting and writhing on the dirty forest floor like beautiful prey being disemboweled alive.

He grabs one.

Rips.

It turns to air.

The second one dissolves too.

The third is gone before he can even touch it, along with the flock overhead.

Nothing remains except his own choking breath, along with the scratch of his fingernails over skin that is, in fact, unbroken.

Steve stares at his hands. Then scrambles. Full panic now.

No dignity. No thought. He drops to all fours and crawls under the first rocky ledge he sees, hauling the bow and arrows in after him, wedging himself into a shallow little cut in the earth and rock like a half-feral animal trying to hide from the end of the world.

Because maybe he is.

Maybe that is exactly what this is.

Under the rock, everything sounds worse.

The forest beyond becomes one big sick orchestra.

Screaming.

Howling.

Shrieking.

The screech of demobats. The buzz of tracker jackers. The laughs of those Purge intruders. The taunting song of the masked girl. The sound of beasts’ claws on stone. The rustle of things with too many limbs moving just beyond sight and underfoot.

Steve digs both hands into his hair.

Tugs.

Hard.

Eyes clenched shut, breathing like he just sprinted out of hell and found out it had a second entrance.

“No no no no no no—fuck—no—Jesus Christ—don’t—don’t, don’t, don’t—”

He’s babbling. He knows he’s babbling. Not full sentences or anything useful or sane. Just slurred, frantic wreckage as his mind frays. His forehead nearly hits his knees. The bow is trapped awkwardly beneath one arm. The arrows keep catching on roots.

He feels himself rocking.

Back and forth.

Back and forth.

…just like the knife.

Back and forth!

Back and forth!

Like maybe if he compresses himself small enough? Then this dark world all around him will forget to keep happening and leave him alone.

“...Steve...”

He still doesn’t open his eyes.

He doesn’t care who’s whispering to him now.

They can fuck off.

He growls, nearly whimpering into his knees…forbidding himself to look. The screaming in the woods dulls a little. Not gone. Just… farther away. Like it’s now becoming muffled, despite the volume.

“Steve...”

The whisper is more crisp now.

And closer.

More insistent.

He cracks his eyes open with all the bravery of a condemned man pulling the hood off his own execution…

…and sees Lucas Sinclair crouched in front of him.

Little bandana around his head.

Dirt on his face.

Wide, earnest eyes.

Windbreaker zipped up.

Oh… it’s just Lucas. Just sweet, steady Lucas Sinclair — kneeling in front of him under a rocky ledge in the middle of a death arena like this is the most ordinary thing in the world.

Steve stares.

Lucas stares back. “Steve,” he says again, softer now. “Are you okay??”

Steve’s whole face crumples with bewildered terror.

He grabs Lucas by the shoulders so fast it almost knocks the kid over.

“What the hell’re you doing here—?” he slurs, voice wrecked and hoarse and panicked all at once. “No, no, no, no—Lucas, you can’t—you can’t be here, Sinclair, you can’t fucking be here, where are the others, where’s Henderson, where’s—”

Lucas slaps a little hand over his mouth.

“Shh.”

Steve goes still.

Not calm. Not remotely calm.

Just stunned enough to stop talking, eyes bugged.

Lucas quickly glances outside the ledge, then back at him with those same big, round, serious eyes...

“No talking,” he whispers. “We have to be lost boys right now.”

Steve just stares at him.

The sentence lands in his head and does absolutely nothing useful there for a second.

“Wha…?”

Lucas shushes once more. He takes Steve’s face in both his hands instead, dirt and all, holding it steady in a way so weirdly familiar it makes something in Steve’s chest tighten and split at the same time.

“We're lost boys,” he whispers again. “We have to hide.”

And somehow…

Somehow that works.

Or half works.

Or maybe the venom just shifts gears.

Because Steve’s breathing actually eases a notch. Not by much, just enough to stop sounding like imminent cardiac failure. Enough to really look at that little face in front of him…

At the dark skin.

At the big eyes.

At the little hands.

At the shape of him.

And some very dim, very battered part of his brain tries to line up the pieces and misses by a country mile.

Because it isn’t Lucas.

It’s Ro.

Little Ro with his little hands cupping Steve Harrington’s frantic, terrified face under a rocky ledge in the woods while the boy on fire loses his ever-loving mind.

Ro leans in close and whispers urgently, sweetly...

“It’s time to fly.”

Then he’s hauling Steve up by the wrist. 

Not because he’s physically stronger. Of course not. But because urgency does not care about body mass. Ro has the kind of grip little kids get when they have decided something with their entire soul.

Steve stumbles after him.

Still bent low.

Still ducking.

Still not all the way back in reality.

And while they crouch-run through the woods, Ro tugging him farther from the ledge — farther from the abandoned tracker jacker nest, farther from the place where Glimmer died and the remaining Careers scattered — there is a whole entire world of truth happening around Steve that he does not know.

Unbeknownst to him, Ro has spent the last two days doing exactly this.

Surviving.

Scavenging.

Waiting.

Watching.

Not just for himself.

For Hannah and Jack too.

For you.

For Steve.

Unbeknownst to him, Ro’s already part of an alliance that Steve never knew existed. A quiet little patchwork of rebellion in the woods. You. Jack. Hannah. Ro. Four tributes, all holding onto one another… through cave walls and tree branches and scavenged food and signals passed in silence.

Unbeknownst to him, Ro left the relative safety of that little cave not because he was reckless… but because he had already decided he was going to find Steve Harrington or die trying.

Unbeknownst to both of them, you have already fallen on the sword for him.

Literally.

Because while Ro drags Steve through the underbrush with all the furious purpose of a little woodland soldier, Tommy Hagan has already found you.

You, sprinting through the tall woods soaked in lake water and tracker jacker venom and Marvel’s windbreaker, delirious and disoriented but still thinking fast enough to run in the wrong direction on purpose.

Tommy saw the jacket first.

The lean build second.

The lithe movement third.

He thought it was Steve.

For one furious, glorious minute he actually thought he had him.

And you let him.

You let him chase. You let him waste ground. You let him close in enough — that when he realized it was you and not Steve, his hellish rage hit too late to matter.

But not too late to hurt.

The sword still got you.

A slice to the lower shin.

Enough to take your legs out from under you for one brutal second before the demobats came screaming down through the morning dark in a swarm vicious enough to send Tommy retreating with a shouted curse and murder in his eyes.

You don’t know if Ro found your boy.

Steve doesn’t know what you just paid for that chance.

Ro doesn’t know either.

All three of you are just running on pure instinct and prayer and the kind of stubbornness that humiliates death itself.

And somewhere far, far from the trees…

The Capitol loses its fucking mind.

Thunderous applause. 

A roar like a stadium at the final seconds of a tied championship game.

People on their feet.

Hands over mouths.

Hands in the air.

The whole technicolor square is alive with shrieking delight and disbelief as they all watch everything turn all at once.

The beautiful baker’s daughter outsmarting the Careers.

The little shadow-boy from the trees saving the golden broken volunteer who once stepped in front of a whole nation for a twelve-year-old back home.

Hopper is bent over at the waist in the middle of it all with both hands braced on his knees, still staring at the screens. As if his tributes might vanish if he so much as blinks. He’s too scared to celebrate properly and too relieved not to. His whole body looks like it wants to pace, to punch through glass, and to kneel in gratitude all at once.

He has witnessed every single perilous second of this nightmare in real time.

He watched Steve stagger off to safety.

He watched you steer Tommy Hagan off-course and pay for it in blood.

He watched Tommy clutch his tracker jacker stung eye, and the hideous scar of a slice that a mysterious robin bird’s beak scratched across his snarling face before he could plunge the sword into your gut.

Now he watches Ro save this whole goddamn chapter with two brave little hands and a spine made of iron.

“Good fucking hell,” he growls, feral with feelings.

Effie Trinket is openly sobbing now — clapping frantically while half-laughing, half-weeping in all her theatrical glory because her starlets are still alive, still alive, still alive!

Cinna sits farther back with both hands clasped hard enough to whiten the knuckles beneath his rings, tears in his eyes and a smile on his face so quiet and proud it looks holy. Petra, Moon and Emerald are right there with him, all of them shell-shocked and ecstatic and trying not to lose their minds.

And back in Hawkins?

Back in Hawkins people are losing theirs anyway.

Inside Steve’s giant house, Eddie Munson is cackling like a man possessed with both arms around Mike and Dustin — all three of them yelling at the television like it can hear them. Mike is shouting something incoherent, while Dustin is damn near levitating with excitement, tears in his eyes and his mouth hanging open with pure feral joy.

Karen Wheeler is clutching Nancy to her chest while her daughter cries hard into her mother’s shoulder, laughing and sobbing all at once as her mother kisses the side of her head over and over and swearing with all the certainty of motherhood and delusion and love that he is going to be fine, he is, he is, he is.

Ted Wheeler stands beside them looking like he has forgotten how to inhale.

And right beside them are the Sinclairs. 

Charles has Lucas up off the ground in a gorilla hug — roaring with laughter and pride and holy-shit adrenaline, because all he just watched on television was Steve Harrington hallucinating his son into the arena like the kid was his own north star.

“That’s my boy,” Charles keeps shouting. “That’s my BOY!”

Sue is right there too… laughing through tears with one hand over her mouth while Erica bounces in her arms, grinning like a little maniac. Because now? This entire thing has become the best day in recorded Sinclair history and no one can tell her otherwise.

Everybody is losing their shit.

Everybody.

And in the middle of all that noise and relief and triumph and thunder—

Steve knows none of it.

All Steve knows is that Ro is real beneath his hand. That the bow is still with him. That the world keeps breaking into stained glass pieces every time he blinks. That the trees refuse to hold still and something up in the sky is still screaming.

He stumbles again.

But Ro catches his wrist before he can face-plant into a mess of roots.

“C’mon,” he pants, sweet but urgent. “You got this—c’mon.”

Steve tries.

God, he really tries.

But the venom is in full swing now.

Every time he forces his eyes open — the world looks like somebody shook it like a snowglobe full of bad memories. Branches twist into staircases while shadows bulge and shrink. Light comes through leaves in impossible colors. The ground won’t stay flat.

Then there’s a shriek.

A shrill cry of pain, like a human being slowly tortured to death.

Steve jerks hard enough to nearly wrench himself free from Ro’s tiny grip as the sound rattles through his skull. And the glitchy figures of Grace and Thomas Ferrin now appear then vanish behind the trees whirring both.

“No—” he panics like a cornered animal. “No NO!!!—”

“It’s not real—” Ro insists, tugging him along. “Don’t look, it’s not real!”

Steve whimpers but obeys. Because his mind, already split and bleeding and drugged, does not know what to do with it. Real or not real, inside this arena, those two humans are very much real and alive… somewhere, still walking this cursed planet.

He hears Robin again.

Or thinks he does.

A laugh. A shout. A voice just at the edge of the clearing in his skull.

He turns his head and sees a cabin on fire.

Not really.

Maybe?

A small one first.

Then larger.

Then larger still.

A creek-side shack turning into a burning church, then a gas station, then the kitchen at his house, then the stupid library car from the train, then a child’s cardboard fort lit from within.

“Keep going,” Ro urges, tugging Steve towards a clearing.

Steve thinks maybe he answers. He can’t tell.

His body’s getting heavier now.

That’s actually the worst part.

Not the hallucinations.

Not the terror.

Not even the venom itself.

It is the heaviness.

The way his bones suddenly seem filled with wet sand. The way his knees stop wanting to be knees and start wanting to be folded things on the forest floor. The way his eyelids get thick, feel heavy as led.

He slurs something…

Ro glances back, eyes huge. “Steve?”

Steve blinks at him and still sees Lucas again for half a second…

Then finally sees Ro.

Then no one.

Then his mother.

Then Ro.

Then his father.

“Steve…”

Then the tree line ahead balloons outward like lungs.

He laughs.

Or cries.

Something escapes him that might be both.

“—m’tired,” he mumbles, which isn’t nearly dramatic enough a statement for what is currently happening inside his bloodstream.

Ro grips him harder.

“You can’t,” he says, voice suddenly fierce in a way that only children can be when they decide they’re right. “You can’t stop right now. We’re almost there. Just a little farther—okay?” He tugs again, walking backward now. “Okay??”

Steve tries to nod.

His head feels like it’s six hundred pounds.

He keeps moving because Ro keeps moving him.

One step.

Another.

Another…

Then the world stutters.

A tree becomes the front gate of his house.

The front gate becomes the foyer.

The foyer becomes the staircase.

The staircase becomes the boardroom his dad used to sit in with those other businessmen in ties and polished shoes and hands that built safety systems for rich people while apparently believing violence could be predicted if you just threw enough money at a lock.

Then it all flattens back into bark again.

Steve thinks his mouth is open.

He thinks maybe he’s saying Robin’s name…

Or Nancy’s…

…or yours.

He doesn’t know.

The only thing he knows is that there’s no more ground under his feet. There is just an empty void. Just black.

Not a fall.

Not impact.

Just blackout.

His body finally chooses for him what his pride never would.

And the last thing Steve Harrington sees before the whole world folds inward and mercifully, finally, goes dark…

…is a tree beside him swelling into the shape of his barricaded house from the Purge night, iron plates over every window, every door bolted shut, every lie of safety still in place…

Until it grows taller, taller, taller, absurd and impossible as a skyscraper…

And then explodes into Fourth of July fireworks.

NEXT PART -> LAST PART ->

⚕️

You got hit.

Steve got stung.

Ro saved him while you led Tommy off-course, wearing Marvel’s jacket like a decoy target in human form.

Tracker jackers swarmed the whole goddamn pack.

Glimmer died.

Steve lost his mind.

Ro found him.

…and Jonathan stood there in the middle of the square with a sack of onions in one hand and stale coffee on his breath while every person in a ten-foot radius collectively lost their absolute fucking shit.

He can still hear it.

The gasps. The shouting. Somebody dropping a glass bottle that broke all over the pavement and nobody even looking down. The old woman near the flower buckets who’d clapped both hands over her mouth so hard Jonathan thought she was going to bruise herself. The butcher yelling, “NO, NO, NO, KID, GET UP—GET UP!” at the screen like Steve could hear him. Some old man by the newspaper stand muttering, “That girl is smarter than all of ’em,” in a tone so awed it sounded almost religious.

Jonathan exhales hard.

The road bends.

Rain keeps coming.

And as suddenly as the thought appears, it hits him like a brick.

The bakery.

“Oh, shit.”

His hands tighten on the wheel.

“Oh fuck me—”

Because he was supposed to stop there first.

That had been the plan.

Market, then bakery, then home, then get Will, then take Will to Steve’s, then circle back and make sure Burdock had what he needed before Joyce left for work.

That was the plan.

Instead he got hijacked by a live broadcast of absolute arena psychosis and now he’s halfway home with a trunk full of damp groceries and his brain full of tracker jacker venom by proxy.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake—” He slaps the heel of one hand lightly against the wheel, furious at himself, and the old car gives one unhappy little shudder as he takes the next turn too fast.

Water sprays up in white sheets on either side. The tires screech. The whole car hydroplanes… just enough to make his stomach drop through the floorboard.

Jonathan swears and jerks it straight again, heart pounding.

“Okay,” he mutters to himself, breathing hard. “Okay, great. Great. Fantastic. Love that. Real smooth, Byers.”

He should just go home first.

That would be the practical thing.

Get Will. Get the groceries inside. Make sure Burdock’s all right. Then go back.

Except now he cannot stop thinking about the bakery. About the fact that if there was ever a moment to push, it’s now. While everybody’s rattled. While what happened is still fresh enough to burn in people’s heads. While your face is still on every television in the country, half-feral and wounded and still fighting.

Jonathan swallows hard.

Because he needs to see what Parker’s doing.

That’s the truth of it.

Not Anjelica. Fuck Anjelica.

He already knows what that witch is doing.

She’ll be behind the counter with her spine straight and her hands cool and her face composed and her voice low and reasonable and all the while she’ll be using every excuse in the world to do exactly what she always does: protect the business in theory while protecting herself in practice.

But Parker…

Jonathan’s jaw tightens.

Parker is harder.

Parker is… annoying, frankly. Because he would actually be easier to hate if he were emptier. If he were actually cold all the way through. If he were truly apathetic. If he didn’t have that buried, godawful heart buried under all that bitterness and all that old grief and all that calloused bullshit Anjelica has spent years packing down around him like wet cement.

Because apathy has never looked right on Parker Everdeen.

Not really.

That’s the thing Jonathan has always held against him… and for him… at the same time.

The fact that Parker cares is precisely why he’s been such a bastard to you.

A person who feels nothing doesn’t spend that much energy resenting one human being.

A person who feels nothing doesn’t keep circling the same old wound until it becomes his whole religion.

A person who feels nothing doesn’t bring bread to Steve Harrington’s house at night and then act like it means nothing.

He grips the wheel and stares through the rain-blurred windshield while the road unwinds back toward town.

Because there had been a stretch there, once.

When Parker had softened.

Jonathan remembers it. You remember it too, even if you don’t talk about it much. Back when you were little enough to still think every version of love could be coaxed back if you just kept trying hard enough.

Eight. Nine. Ten.

There had been a window of time when Parker actually tried.

He’d sat beside you on the bakery floor while your father kneaded dough at dawn. He’d carried flour sacks bigger than his own torso like they were all badges of honor. He’d let you trail after him. Had even smiled about it sometimes. Had taken your hand crossing the street. Had tucked a blanket around your shoulders once when you fell asleep in a booth after closing and your father had looked so tired Jonathan thought he might cry.

There had been heart in him then.

There had been.

…and then Peeta Everdeen died on the floor.

Jonathan’s throat tightens. He doesn’t let himself linger there long… but the memory comes anyway because it always does when Parker’s involved.

Your father on the ground.

You, sobbing. Anjelica, stunned. Parker, white-faced and frozen. Jonathan there because of course he was there, because where else would he have been? You were his best friend in the world and he’d lived half his life in and out of that bakery like it was a second house.

And Peeta—God, Peeta had barely gotten the words out through the pain in his chest before the pain took the rest.

I love you. To you.

Then look after her. To Parker.

…and that was it.

That was all.

Not because he did not love Parker, too. Jonathan knows that. He knows it in his bones. Knows it the way he knows his mother’s face and Will’s laugh and the exact sound rain makes on the Byers’ roof in springtime. Peeta Everdeen adored both his children. Loved and adored them.

But grief is not logical, and narcissists love a vacuum.

Anjelica took those last words and turned them into a blade.

He told her he loved her. Not you. Not me. Her.

Jonathan’s seen it happen in real time over the years since. The way one poisoned idea, repeated long enough and gently enough, under the guise of injury instead of cruelty… becomes foundation. The way that Parker stopped leaning toward you and started leaning away. The way he rebuilt every wall he had briefly set down after your father spent years trying to show him you were not the grave his mother died in.

The rain gets harder.

Jonathan barely notices.

Because that part of it all — Anjelica and Parker and the whole dead rotten architecture of the Everdeen grief… is one of the reasons he can never quite bring himself to hate Parker cleanly.

Lonnie Byers had been loud with it.

Lonnie had used fists made of words and doors and liquor and voice.

Anjelica, from what Jonathan’s watched over all these years… doesn’t need volume. She knows how to make someone feel guilty without ever sounding cruel. She knows how to make silence itself do the punishing, knows how to stand in a room and let everyone else feel like the unreasonable one.

And Parker…? Parker had been ten years old when your mother died. Then barely eighteen when your father dropped dead in front of him.

He never had a fucking chance.

Jonathan still wants to punch him sometimes.

But he knows what it is to grow up under somebody’s distortion.

That knowledge is the only thing that has ever kept him from wringing Parker Everdeen’s neck with his bare hands.

Everlark Bakery appears through the rainfall a minute later, all warm window light and fogged glass and that familiar painted sign that somehow still looks gentle even on mornings like this.

Jonathan pulls in too fast.

Brakes hard.

The car jolts.

He kills the engine and then sits there for one second, both hands still on the wheel, chest moving fast. Then he grabs the hood of his jacket, throws it up over his hair, and gets out.

Rain immediately slaps cold against his jeans. He hunches into it, crossing the lot at a half-run, boots splashing through shallow puddles — then yanks open the bakery door hard enough to make the bell over it jangle too brightly.

Warmth hits him first. Then freshly baked bread. Then television noise.

And there he is.

Parker.

Standing near the front of the bakery with both arms crossed so tightly over his chest it almost looks painful, staring up at the mounted television in the corner like he’s trying to burn a hole through it with his eyes.

When the bell rings, Parker’s head snaps toward the door.

Those bright blue eyes hit Jonathan’s face immediately.

For a second neither of them says anything.

Jonathan pulls his hood down.

Parker just stares…

And behind the counter, Anjelica is exactly where Jonathan knew she would be — setting out fresh trays with those calm, precise movements of hers, her long near-black hair pulled back now, not a single gesture wasted. She also glances up, but only for a second. Just enough to acknowledge his existence before going back to arranging pastries with the effortlessly cool detachment of someone pretending this morning is ordinary.

It’s not ordinary.

The television flickers.

The screen cuts through brief arena shots — Thresh moving like a shadow through the grasslands, Foxface crouched at the stream, Steve barely visible beneath leaves and brush while little Ro presses chewed herbs against one of the stings on his arm.

Parker’s eyes drag back to the screen like they are attached by wire.

Jonathan takes that in.

And something in his chest goes tight and hot all at once.

Because there it is.

The thing Anjelica does not have.

Parker is worried.

Not politely concerned. Not grim in the abstract. Not just watching because the television is on.

Worried.

It’s written all over him in the way that his jaw is too tight. In the way his eyes keep going glassy without his permission. In the fact that he has not moved from that spot even though there’s dough that needs turning and ovens that need checking and a morning rush that should already be starting.

Jonathan clocks all of it in a blink.

He also clocks Anjelica’s stillness.

She’s not uncaring in a cartoon-villain way. That would almost be easier. No, hers is worse than that. Hers is the kind of restraint that suggests she sees no use in panic. As if love is inefficient once events are already in motion. As if feeling too much about a thing after the fact is simply bad management.

Jonathan hates her instantly all over again.

He cuts right to it. “You both saw?”

Parker still doesn’t answer. His eyes remain fixed on the TV, waiting for your image to reappear — even while his whole body seems to pull more tightly inward around the question.

Anjelica answers instead.

“Hard to miss,” she says mildly.

Jonathan just looks at her for a moment. The television light flickers across her sharp, sunken cheekbones, cool and silver-blue. Somewhere behind him rain pelts the tall windows. The whole bakery smells like sugar and yeast and a brewing storm.

He doesn’t bother pretending he’s here for anything except exactly what he came for. “We need to send more.”

Anjelica doesn’t look surprised.

That almost makes it worse.

Her hands keep moving over the tray in front of her as if he’d merely asked about flour inventory instead of your life.

“We’ve already sent enough this week to remind the Capitol who she is,” she says coolly. “And who this business is.”

Jonathan actually lets out a short incredulous laugh.

Enough.

That word almost takes him out at the knees.

“Enough?” he repeats icily.

Now Parker looks over.

Not at Anjelica.

At Jonathan.

Anjelica folds a towel with maddening care. “The point of these gestures is not volume. It’s visibility.”

Jonathan stares at her.

Then at Parker.

Then back at her.

“Visibility,” he repeats flatly. “Right. Cool. Cool, that’s great. Meanwhile your stepdaughter is limping through the woods with a cut in her leg and Steve Harrington’s been half out of his fucking mind since sunrise.”

“She’s alive.”

“So far.”

A beat.

Then another.

Anjelica finally sets the towel down and looks at him fully. She never raises her voice. Never needs to…

“That panic in your tone,” she says, “isn’t helping anyone.”

Jonathan can’t even help the smile that comes then, even though there’s no humor in it.

“No?”

“No.”

His eyes flash. “Because from where I’m standing, sitting here acting like this is a bookkeeping problem isn’t doing much either.”

The silence that follows that is precise.

It slices clean.

Parker’s shoulders tense.

Anjelica’s eyes narrow just slightly — not enough for anyone who doesn’t know how to look for it. But Jonathan knows how to look for it.

“You’re upset,” she says softly, tone wry. “I understand that.”

God.

Goddamn, she is good at this.

Not good like admirable. Good like a knife is well-made.

Jonathan can actually feel the shape of the trap in her tone. The attempt to turn his urgency into immaturity. To make his emotion the unstable thing in the room instead of her own unnerving detachment.

He takes one breath.

Then another.

And makes himself answer evenly.

“No,” he starts slowly. “I’m clearheaded, actually. Which is why I’m telling you both that whatever you think this is costing you now? It’ll cost more later if you sit on your hands and call it strategy.”

Anjelica tips her head. “And you know the books now?”

Jonathan almost laughs again.

“No. I know her.”

That lands.

It lands on Parker more than his stepmother. Because Parker’s mouth now tightens at that and his eyes go back to the television where your image has just flickered onto the screen for half a second — just you moving carefully beside the stream, one leg off in the slightest wrong way, Marvel’s jacket still over your own, hood up, your face pale and set with pain and focus both.

Parker doesn’t breathe.

Jonathan sees it.

Sees the way your brother’s whole face changes and barely tries to hide the change too late.

Behind him, Anjelica says, “This bakery was left to all three of us, Jonathan. I’m not sure if you’ve forgotten that.”

He goes still.

Because yup.

There it is.

That sentence.

Not about money. Not really. Not about logistics. Not really...

A reminder. A warning. A poisoned relic dragged up from the floorboards.

All three of us.

Her father loved all three of us.

Jonathan doesn’t look at Parker right away because he doesn’t need to. He can feel the silence hit him. Can feel it hit the whole room. And sure enough, when he does look… Parker is no longer watching the TV. He’s staring down at the counter with that awful neutral expression he gets when he’s trying so hard not to feel anything that his whole face becomes made of stone.

Jonathan’s stomach turns.

He knows exactly what Anjelica meant. She knows he knows. Parker knows they both know.

And for one heated second, Jonathan just wants to put his fist through the cake stand and tell her to stop using a dying man’s last fucking breath like a goddamn rent payment.

Instead he inhales through his nose.

Exhales just as slowly.

Then says, with care sharpened to a point, “Yeah. I remember.”

The TV changes again.

Jack peeks out of the cave while Hannah sits inside on the sleeping bag with blackberries in her hand, small and quiet and alive while telling him, “She’ll make it back. She has to.” And at those words, Jack nods — still warily peeking through the foliage keeping them hidden.

Jonathan catches that image in his peripheral vision… and so does Parker.

Except Parker doesn’t just catch it.

He locks on.

And all the words in the room stop mattering to him.

Jonathan sees it happen in real time: the way that Parker’s attention leaves them both and goes all the way to the screen. The way everything Anjelica is saying becomes distant noise. The way his eyes soften again against his own will while he watches the little cave and the little girl and the blackberries and all the impossible evidence of what you’ve been doing out there.

Jonathan follows his gaze.

The television cuts again.

Back to you.

You’re still by the stream. Still moving carefully. Still upright. Still trying. One step, then another… jaw set tight. The camera catches the slightest hitch in your gait and holds it there. Not enough to humiliate. Enough to make clear that you are hurting.

Parker doesn’t blink.

Jonathan and Anjelica are still speaking. Maybe even arguing. Their voices go on, clipped and low and passive-aggressive enough to raise the hair on the back of Jonathan’s neck.

He doesn’t even fully hear what they’re saying anymore because Parker’s silence has suddenly gotten louder than both of them. All that he catches is the tail end of a phrase from Anjelica—

“—and feed the town with what, exactly?”

There.

There it is.

The practical line.

The saintly line. The martyr line.

The one that makes it sound like any charity toward you would somehow be charity stolen from everybody else.

Jonathan’s head turns toward her again to clip back — just as Parker does something completely unexpected.

He speaks.

Not loudly.

Almost too softly, actually.

But with decision.

“Do it.”

Both Jonathan and Anjelica look at him.

But Parker is already moving. He’s gone behind the counter before either of them can respond, pulling open the lower drawers, reaching for ingredients, yanking a clean apron from the peg with one hand.

For one brief stunned second Jonathan just watches him.

Anjelica goes so still it’s almost frightening.

“Parker…”

He does not stop.

Does not look at her.

Does not acknowledge she’s spoken to him.

Parker just reaches for flour, then sugar, then the big mixing bowl like a man obeying a command that came from somewhere older than thought.

Anjelica recovers quickly because it’s a skill. “You can’t be serious.”

Parker says nothing.

“Parker.”

Still nothing.

Jonathan stands there in the middle of the bakery floor with rainwater still dripping from his jacket and he genuinely has no fucking clue what to do with his face.

Because this is it.

This is the crack.

This is the thing he always knew lived under Parker’s ribs and never had the nerve to stay out in the open.

Anjelica circles behind the counter now, posture immaculate, voice still soft.

“…if we do this now,” she tries, shifting gears, “we are shorting production for people here. For families who rely on us. Here. For people your sister would want us to keep feeding.”

Oh this bitch is good, Jonathan thinks to himself.

But Parker just keeps moving.

Measuring.

Setting things out.

Not fast, exactly. Just relentless.

Anjelica follows him, eyes forced-solemn.

“She would hate that.”

Jonathan sees Parker’s shoulders jump at the words but he still moves. And something about it actually makes Jonathan close his eyes for one second… because there it is again. The guilt with no teeth marks. The manipulation so quietly voiced it almost passes for concern.

He opens his eyes again but doesn’t even dare speak.

Not yet.

He can tell that Parker’s balancing on the edge of something. 

One wrong word might shove him backward.

Anjelica tries again, gentler. 

“We all want her safe...” She pauses briefly, then adds, “you know that...” 

That almost gets a laugh out of Jonathan. A dark one. A murderous one.

But Parker’s the one who finally stops.

Only for a second.

He plants both hands on the counter and bows his head. Rain rattles against the windows. The TV crackles on with some arena commentary about Ro layering leaves over Steve’s unconscious body — the image of the little kid bent over that impossible task making Jonathan’s chest burn.

“And starving this town right alongside her?” Anjelica keeps going. “Isn’t what she’d want.”

Then Parker stands up straight and finally looks at his stepmother.

Not confident. Not polished. Not even especially brave-looking.

Just… done.

And when he speaks, his voice is low and frayed around the edges.

“She’s bleeding.”

Anjelica blinks.

He keeps going before she can answer. “She’s out there bleeding, and—you want to talk to me about pastries and inventory.”

“It is not that simple—”

“No,” Parker cuts in, sharper now, and Jonathan actually almost startles because Parker Everdeen never cuts in. “It’s not.”

The room goes silent.

Parker swallows once, hard.

Jonathan can tell he hates this. Hates the speaking, hates the disobedience, hates the feeling of standing opposite Anjelica even now.

But he does it anyway.

“She built half this place with her bare hands,” he goes on, and his eyes flick once—only once—to the TV, then back down. “If there’s anything in here worth using for her, we use it. Alright?”

Anjelica’s face does not change.

That is somehow the most unnerving part.

She just studies him with that terrible composure of hers, like she’s already deciding what emotional invoice to send him for this later.

Jonathan stands there quiet as a ghost.

Partly because he does not trust himself to say anything useful.

Partly because his heart is now doing something weird and ugly and hopeful in his chest.

And partly because the television has now cut to Steve under the brush while Ro chews medicinal leaves and presses them to the stings, and Parker sees that too… with those blue eyes that were never born cold.

Jonathan sees Anjelica see it with her prejudiced eyes…

The “little black boy” tending to “the rich dead family’s white son,” like some tiny battlefield medic from a fairytale that forgot how to be sweet.

Your plan is everywhere. Your fingerprints are nowhere.

Anjelica’s mouth pulls just slightly.

Not a sneer.

Worse.

The beginning of one that gets strangled off almost before it forms.

Then she yanks open a drawer so sharply that Jonathan jumps.

Parker doesn’t even flinch. He just keeps moving, working with what he has. Bowls. Flour. Butter. Honey. Fruit preserves. More flour. Cinnamon. Sugar... His hands know where everything is and what to do with it. He starts building the thing almost before the argument is over, as if action is the only way to keep from losing his nerve.

Anjelica goes silent.

Not defeated.

Just silent.

The silent treatment is used as strategy. The guilt has now moved into atmosphere instead of language.

Jonathan knows that trick. Knows it so well it makes his stomach ache. He’s been on the receiving end of it many times before, back when he was seven, when Lonnie tried it on him before Joyce kicked him to the damn curb, never letting him back into their home or their lives. He knows the way it feels, how it causes one to panic and scramble and apologize for nothing they ever did wrong to begin with…

But Parker doesn’t apologize.

He still doesn’t even look at her.

…and after another half minute of standing there like someone hit the pause button on him, Jonathan finally clears his throat.

“Well, uhh,” he says, because what the fuck else is there to say.

Parker looks up then, only briefly, newly irritated by the existence of another person still in the room during this awful moment and not helping out.

“Well, uhh,” he repeats curtly, gesturing a hand. “Grab an apron, let’s go.”

Jonathan lifts both hands a little. “I gotta go get Will. Take him to Steve’s.”

Parker stares at him.

Jonathan, unable to stop himself, adds, “Then I need to get back to Burdock, because somebody does.”

Yikes. That one lands meanly.

Parker’s jaw flexes.

Anjelica looks almost pleased that Jonathan took the shot instead of Parker having to deal with the guilt laid raw.

Jonathan hates that he just gave her that.

Parker wipes flour off one hand onto his apron and clips, without inflection, “Fine.”

Jonathan waits.

But Parker doesn’t dare look at him again. Just says, “Then come back when Ms. Joyce isn’t working.”

“She works ‘til close.”

“Then compare schedules and help when you can.”

Jonathan blinks. Because that isn’t exactly permission, not exactly gratitude or apology either.

But it is an ask.

And for Parker Everdeen, asks are rarer than snow in the summertime.

Jonathan shifts his weight. “Burdock’s still with her till Mom clocks in, then I’ll be with him.”

No answer.

So he pushes once more, softer now.

“Tomorrow. I can come help.”

Parker tosses a wooden spoon aside, kneading dough. “What good’s that do if we’re here doing this now.”

“It does your grandfather’s lungs good,” Jonathan replies with steely calm so that he doesn’t let his impassioned rage about their negligence towards their own kin put a stop to what they’re doing. “I think your sister would want that, right?”

Anjelica arches a wicked brow at that audacious wraparound… but she’s still too committed to her silence to rebuttal, and too eager for him to blow it.

Parker huffs out something between annoyance and reluctant acceptance.

“Whatever. Just—go get Will before the goddamn skies falls and more gates tear open.”

Jonathan looks at him for a long second.

Really looks.

At the hard line of his shoulders. At the tired circles under his eyes. At the furious, mechanical way he’s throwing himself into helping because if he stops moving he’ll have to name why.

Then Jonathan turns toward the door.

The bell chimes when he opens it, more gently this time. The rainfall sounds louder instantly, cold and relentless and real, already getting worse.

He gets halfway out…

Stops.

Something in him turns him back around.

Parker’s still working. Anjelica’s still silent. The TV’s still going.

And Jonathan — standing there with one hand on the door with humidity and rain at his back… says the thing before he can talk himself out of it.

He keeps his eyes only on Parker as he does.

“Whatever you’ve told yourself all these years,” he says, voice low and rough enough to cut, “she never believed it.”

Parker goes eerily still, eyes still on the dough.

Jonathan doesn’t blink. “She never blamed you. Not once.”

Anjelica turns slowly at that, disbelief and warning both crawling across her face now.

But Jonathan ignores her completely and keeps looking right at Parker. 

“She’s spent half her life loving people who made that harder than it ever needed to be. You included.” He swallows. “So if you’re finally gonna do right by her, then do it all the way. Don’t make her drag it out of you from a fucking arena.”

The bakery is dead silent.

Parker doesn’t look up.

But the hand holding the measuring cup has stopped moving.

Jonathan lets that sit.

Then he pulls his hood up over his hair, steps back into the rain… and leaves the bakery with the bell jangling behind him and Anjelica’s silence following him all the way to the car.

Effie Trinket has never looked more at home in a pressure cooker.

Not because she enjoys the frenzy, though in a different life she very well might have, or because she is untouched by what is happening either — because that would be a lie, and a vulgar one at that. No, the reason  that she looks so heartbreakingly, magnificently at home in this fever-pitched little Capitol conference room is because pressure has always had a strange way of revealing what someone is actually made of.

And Effie Trinket, for all her authentic silk and glitter and pearlized polish and lacquered smiles and absurdly elegant posture, is made of steel.

“MRS. TRINKET—OVER HERE, PLEASE!”

The conference room itself is a madhouse dressed as sophistication.

Tall silver screens run along the walls in seamless panels, every single one flashing between live arena feeds and Capitol graphics and press footage from Hawkins, Indiana — where apparently half the town has collectively decided that rules are for weaker constitutions. The ceiling lights are too white. The long tables are too reflective. The air smells faintly of hairspray, espresso, warm camera equipment and the expensive kind of cologne that lingers like a threat.

And every seat is full.

Not just with reporters. But with personalities. With hungry little monsters in couture, with anchors and journalists and culture writers and teen magazine columnists and sleek political correspondents and gossip creatures and social editors and feature writers and society women pretending they are not gossip creatures. They are all here. Capitol Vogue. Panem Tonight. District Digest. Sunup with Caesar. Ember Youth. The Victor’s View. Capitol Pulse. The Capitol Ledger. Elle. Goldline. The Ticker. Brightstar. Panem Vanity. Spill.

Even two ridiculous little teenybopper outlets — Arena17 and TributeBeat — with heart-shaped logos and over-highlighted interns who look like they have personally never known a hard day in their lives and are now acting like you invented romance and combat simultaneously.

And right in the center of all of it, poised behind a pearl-toned podium with one gloved hand resting lightly at its edge, stands Effie Trinket.

She is dazzling.

Not in the empty way. Not in the shallow way these people usually mean when they use that word. She is dazzling because she has chosen to be incandescent while worried sick. She has chosen shape and grace and clear diction and perfect lipstick while both her tributes bleed on live television. Her dress today is a structured thing in pale lavender with subtle gold threading through the seams, severe at the shoulder and soft through the skirt, like somebody made a battle standard and decided to call it couture. Her blonde curls are sculpted within an inch of their life. Her earrings flash every time she turns her head. Her eyes, behind the sparkle and powder and practiced delight, are bright enough to betray her completely to anyone looking close enough.

She means every word.

That is why nobody in the room can stop listening to her.

“And the truth of the matter,” Effie is saying now, chin high and voice clear as a bell, “is that courage need not always look loud. Sometimes it is quite soft. Sometimes it is lovely… and sometimes it is a girl in borrowed black, limping through the trees with blood in her shoe and love in her chest.”

A full-body shiver goes through the room.

Pens move.

Microphones inch closer.

Somewhere to the left, one of the Panem Tonight correspondents actually presses a manicured hand to her sternum like she’s been personally struck by the sentence.

Effie clocks it. Of course she does. She clocks everything.

The questions come in waves.

“Miss Trinket—do you truly believe that Miss Everdeen intended from the beginning to misdirect the Career alliance?”

“Was the diversion spontaneous or planned?”

“Did she knowingly sacrifice her own safety for Steve Harrington?”

“How early did you realize she was playing the long game?”

“Are we looking at strategy, or devotion?”

“Is it both?”

Effie does not rush her answers. That’s one of the great secrets of her art, and it is art. She’s never understood why anyone would pretend otherwise. Publicity is theater with blood pressure. It’s curation under attack. It’s survival with powder on.

She lets the room ask, let’s the frenzy peak just enough…

Then answers as though she is laying pearls one by one onto velvet.

“Oh, it is devotion,” she says, and her eyes go just the slightest bit glassy in a way that feels wholly genuine and therefore lands all the harder. “Let us not strip the poetry from it simply because it is also strategic. That young lady is in love with that young man. Has been since they were scarcely taller than their school satchels. I am not surprised in the least. She was always, always going to fight for him.”

The room nearly combusts.

There are actual gasps. Half-delighted, half-horrified, and wholly feral little sounds.

A reporter from Capitol Vogue leans forward so abruptly she almost knocks over her own recorder. “But does he love her back?!”

Someone from Pulse blurts, “How can he not know by now?”

Another voice cuts across from the second row. “Will they be reunited?”

A young brunette thing from Brightstar, all lip gloss and shaking hands around her recorder, asks, “How will justice be served?”

Effie meets every single pair of eyes in turn.

“The truth,” she says with absolute certainty, “always comes out. It cannot be rushed, nor can it be summoned by force. Nor can it be said exactly when or how it will bloom. But love… has no timeline.” Her gaze sharpens. “Neither does justice.”

There is a charged silence.

Effie leans ever so slightly forward. “But there will be justice,” she says, and now her voice has iron beneath the silk, “for our dove. For the burden she bears and bleeds for the one who holds her heart.”

That one hits like a struck match in dry summer grass.

Questions burst again.

“Do you mean justice in the arena?”

“In sponsorship?”

“In public sentiment?”

“What do you make of the Hawkins street response?”

“How significant is public pressure?”

“Can public pressure influence the odds?”

“Do you believe the nation is rallying around both tributes or favoring one?”

At the edge of the room, Effie catches a flicker of movement and sees the other publicists clustered in their own strange little orbit. Some are trying not to stare and failing miserably. Some are annoyed in that polished, pinched Capitol way… the way ambitious professionals get when someone else has accidentally become the center of the universe while they’re still trying to secure a columnist from Goldline. A few look openly impressed. One man from District 2’s team has the expression of somebody chewing glass, while District 1’s publicist (all lacquered indifference and razor-clipped bangs) is pretending to look at her notes while listening to every syllable.

And there, nearer the back, is Pepper Potts of District 7.

Soft-spoken, warm-eyed, immaculately put together without ever looking fussy. Her honeyed hair is pinned low and sleek at the nape of her neck, her cream suit crisp, her expression composed but far more human than most people in this room know how to be. She is standing beside the wall with her hands loosely clasped, and the moment Hannah’s name gets mentioned again in a question from Capitol Ledger — “little Hannah from Seven, still hidden, still alive” — Pepper’s entire face changes in that subtle, devastating way only somebody paying attention would notice.

Her heart swells right there in her throat.

Effie notices that too.

How could she not?

Because of course Hannah is part of this story now. You made her part of it. You made Jack a part of it. Ro. too… Steve most of all. You have somehow, inside less than three days, turned yourself into the axis around which four other endangered lives are now rotating. And the room cannot get enough of it.

A reporter from Ember Youth, no older than twenty-two and practically vibrating with the thrill of being alive at the same time as a narrative this juicy, asks, “Do you believe that’s why the public has attached so strongly to her? Because she’s protective? Because she’s… merciful?”

Effie’s smile softens.

“I believe,” she answers carefully, “that people know grace when they see it, even in a place built to erase it. They know mercy when it appears where mercy has no business surviving.” Her voice grows almost wistful. “And what is she if not precisely that? The arena angel. The dove in the midst of cruelty and warfare. The baker’s daughter carrying kindness into a place that does not deserve her.”

One of the teen outlets actually sniffs.

Good, Effie thinks. Cry.

On the silver screen behind her, the feed changes again.

You, briefly.

Just for a few seconds. Leaning against a tree, face gone pale beneath the hood, one hand braced above the cut in your shin while you breathe through the nausea of looking at it.

Effie’s pulse jumps.

But she does not dare let the room see it.

She does, however… see Pepper glance at the screen too. Sees the awful little flash of sympathy there. Sees, farther off, one of District 5’s interns on the social media team squeeze her own wrist hard enough to redden it at the sight of Jack safe in that cave while her older tribute spirals out near the Cornucopia. Effie sees all the quiet things... The human things… The things that survive even here.

The questions keep coming.

“Miss Trinket, is Steve Harrington aware of the extent of her sacrifice?”

“How can he be, if he’s unconscious?”

“What happens if he wakes before she reaches him?”

“Do you think she was right not to kill the Careers in their sleep when she had the chance?”

…that last one stops the room.

It doesn’t silence everyone completely.

That’s part of what makes it so ugly.

It simply lands and goes still there. A few people murmur. A few others shift in their chairs. Somebody gives a low, subtly scandalized hum. Effie blinks once. Twice. Not because she’s rattled beyond recovery — but because the out-of-touchness of that question is so staggering that it requires a moment’s mental accommodation.

The journalist who asked it is sitting three seats from the front — female, acid-bright green satin, bleached blonde hair waved too stiffly. A jeweled pen is clutched in one clawed hand, her smile like a paper cut.

Ah.

There you are.

Effie’s own smile returns, every bit as dazzling as before. “What’s your name, dear?” she asks sweetly.

The woman sits up taller, delighted to have the floor.

“Rita Skeeter.”

Of course it is.

Effie knows this woman’s ways all too well.

There’s a tiny stirring in the conference room. Several people recognize the name immediately… and look either entertained or exhausted, depending on how often Rita has tried to turn their private lives into a column.

Effie nods once, as though she’s been handed something mildly interesting at tea.

“Miss Skeeter,” she says warmly, “what a very lively question.”

Rita’s smile sharpens. “It is a practical one.”

“Is it?”

The room goes a little quieter.

Effie folds her hands at the podium and tilts her head in that way of hers that somehow manages to be both cherubic and vaguely lethal.

“Because from where I stand,” she says, “it sounds rather like asking why a wounded young woman, surrounded by four better-armed tributes she had only just outmaneuvered… did not simply rise in the dark and become an executioner.” She lets that sit. “And I daresay the answer is terribly simple.”

Rita opens her mouth.

Effie keeps going. “She is not stupid.”

A few startled laughs slip out before people can stop them.

Effie smiles brighter.

“She is strategic, yes. She is brave beyond reason, certainly. But she is not foolish enough to confuse opportunity with invincibility. Nor is she so…” She takes a beat, doing everything not to look at the Careers’ publicists and team members leaning in. “…blood-drunk that she would mistake slaughter for intelligence.” Effie’s kind voice hardens, just slightly. “Miss Everdeen is alive because she knows precisely when not to strike.” A beat lands, before she cannot help but add, “just like she told Mr. Hagan, when ordered to climb up the tree.”

That gives a collective murmur through the room.

The teen outlets snicker amongst themselves, already excited to feature that exact quote inside their juicy column.

But Rita, unwilling to surrender so easily, presses on. “But surely if the point is survival, sentiment becomes expensive.”

That gets a couple of murmurs too. Less approving now, more wary.

Effie’s sparkly eyes flash. 

“Sentiment?” she repeats lightly. “My dear, you are mistaking conscience for weakness.”

There it is.

A little intake of breath all around the room.

Rita actually stills.

Effie, relentless now in that gracious, devastating way of hers, goes on. 

“The very reason the nation is riveted by Ren Everdeen is because she has managed to remain herself in a system designed to strip that from her. She has not survived by accident. She has survived because she understands people.” Effie lifts one shoulder in the smallest of shrugs. “And because she is not foolish enough to murder in the dark when daylight may yet offer better odds.”

Then she turns, elegantly, opening the answer back out to the room instead of letting Rita own another second of it.

“What she has done,” Effie declares, her voice now for everyone, “is protect innocence where she found it. Four times over, if we are counting properly… And I do think we ought to count properly.”

That lands thunderously.

Because now it is not just about you protecting Steve. Now it’s about Hannah and Jack, and little Ro too. Four full names in the air. Four lives your actions have touched. Four small rebellions.

Even Rita Skeeter has the decency to shut up for the moment.

The room shifts. The energy changes with it. The frenzy doesn’t vanish, but it deepens. Becomes more solemn. More reverent. More dangerous in its own way.

Questions start again, but they sound different now.

Less bloodthirsty.

More invested.

“What do you think she’ll need next?”

“Can public pressure help secure aid?”

“Is Steve still central to her strategy?”

“Do the little ones know how much she’s risked?”

“Do you believe the new bond between Harrington and Barnett changes the endgame?”

“What does mercy look like now?”

Effie answers as many as she means to and not one more.

That is another one of her talents. Knowing the line before anyone else sees it. Knowing exactly how much to give the room before they would gladly pull out your bones if she let them.

When she finally feels the moment beginning to tilt from useful into greedy, she primly straightens.

“I have said rather too much already,” she says, airy but final.

There is immediate protest.

“Just one more—”

“Miss Trinket—”

“What about the reunited angle—”

“Can you confirm whether—”

But Effie raises one gloved hand and somehow, miraculously, silence comes back.

“I do adore your enthusiasm,” she tells them, and means enough of it for the lie not to matter. “But I think it is time you all troubled someone else for a while. There are eleven tributes left, after all, and though I remain entirely convinced ours are the most compelling—”

That earns the exact laugh she wanted.

“—even I,” she continues, “must occasionally permit the rest of the nation its due.”

A few more scattered laughs color the room — along with some groans and several desperate final scribbles.

Effie steps back from the podium.

And as she does, the silver screens shift yet again…

You.

Still moving.

Still alive.

Still carrying both your wound and the weight of every pair of eyes inside this room.

Something fierce and maternal and glittering with rage surges through Effie so hard that she nearly sways with it.

It is only the beginning of day three.

Only day three.

And already she knows with chilling certainty that this week is going to try to kill her in ways entirely separate from the arena.

Fine.

Let it try.

She is, after all, Effie Trinket. She knows how to smile with blood on her lips and still keep her poised spine straight while doing it.

So when she turns from the podium and begins to hurry offstage through the side aisle, still hearing the room swell back into chatter behind her, she does not allow herself even one second of visible collapse.

Not one.

Only when she reaches the corridor beyond, half-shadowed and temporarily blessedly free of microphones, does she finally stop and press one hand to her own chest. Not dramatically. Just enough to feel the beating there.

“You are not dying in there,” she fiercely whispers to no one and both of you. “Do you hear me? No tombstones. Not for either of you. I forbid it.”

Then she lifts her chin, smooths one hand over the front of her dress… and strides back into the war.

Because keeping you and Steve alive in the press is not a side task now.

It is the task.

And by God, Effie Trinket has never once in her life shown up underdressed for a fight.

Will is on the floor in front of the couch with his overnight bag unzipped and half-emptied around him like he got in a fistfight with his own belongings and lost on principle. Socks. A flannel. A stack of sketch paper. Two pencils. Red flashlight. One random action figure that has absolutely no business being in there. His toothbrush wrapped in a washcloth. 

“I’m just saying—” he’s rambling, shoving everything back inside his duffel in no discernible order, talking so fast that he’s now halfway to smoke, “I don’t understand why they haven’t cut back to her again, because obviously she’s fine—I mean, not fine-fine, but alive fine, and there’s a difference, and if they don’t show her soon, I’m literally gonna lose my mind—”

“You and the rest of the country,” Jonathan mutters sourly from beside the television, where he’s now leaning over to turn the volume down one notch because Claudius’s voice is currently making him want to commit a felony.

The Byers’ quaint living room glows blue from the dreary morning light, along with the TV — where Caesar Flickerman and Claudius Templesmith are now still going feral about the entire ordeal took place on live television earlier this morning. Every single media outlet, every local news station in Hawkins and every nationwide news channel have all decided that the world can only talk about one thing now.

You.

Steve.

The tracker jackers.

The dead pageant queen.

The angry Career boy, still out for blood.

And the little boy who dragged the handsome golden boy into safety.

But right now? The Byers’ are collectively losing their shit over the first one.

“It was a sword,” Will blurts, like nobody knows that. “That wasn’t a scratch. That wasn’t some little nick. That was a sword. He had a sword—!”

“Believe me,” Joyce sighs, passing behind him with a mug in one hand and Burdock’s medicine cup in the other, “nobody in this house has somehow forgotten the giant shiny murder sword, honey.”

Will twists around on his knees, hair falling in his eyes. “I’m being serious.”

“So are we,” Jonathan says earnestly, tone gentle.

And that’s the thing.

Everybody is.

That’s what makes the whole house feel so bizarre right now, so unhinged in a way that’s almost funny — if it weren’t so deeply, skin-crawlingly awful. Because Will is frantic in the innocent way twelve-year-olds are frantic, full of heart and panic and too much imagination. Joyce is frantic in the seasoned way mothers are frantic, which means that she looks almost completely calm while death stares down her whole family. Jonathan is frantic in the “eldest Byers way,” meaning he looks one wrong sentence away from putting his fist through the nearest wall. And Burdock—

Well, Burdock is sitting in his chair with a blanket over his lap and his inhaler on the side table… and the television glow making every line in his face look older than it did yesterday.

He’s not a frail man by spirit. Never has been. Even now, with his lungs the way they are — even now with his body increasingly betraying him like some slow mutiny… there is still too much iron in him to ever come across delicate.

But this morning?

This morning he looks wrung the fuck out.

Not because he’s weak.

Because he’s petrified.

Word-sick petrified. Bone-deep petrified. The kind of petrified that sits behind his breastbone and makes every breath a little sharper than it ought to be. The kind that keeps dragging his eyes back to the TV screen every time that it flickers. Every time the feed cuts to a different corner of the arena. Every time Caesar’s bold voice lifts theatrically and Claudius murmurs something all polished and expensive over footage of children trying not to die before breakfast.

Any time it cuts back to you, Burdock’s whole face changes.

Not dramatically. He is not a man built for dramatic displays. But Jonathan sees it. Joyce does too. Will absolutely sees it. That little tightening around the mouth. The fury in his wise old eyes. The way his weathered hand settles instinctively against his chest as though he could physically pin his own heart down and tell it not to make this worse.

And fuck, does Jonathan hate the television for making him watch it.

He knows exactly what Burdock’s seeing every single time your face comes up there on screen. Not the “arena angel.” Not “the baker’s daughter,” or the little media myth those Capitol creeps keep dressing you up as. He just sees you.

His girl.

His little Ren.

The little thing who used to climb up into his lap with a stack of books almost bigger than her own head. The girl who still sat by his chair now and read aloud to him when his lungs got bad enough that talking wore him out. The one who makes his tea the way he likes it without ever asking twice. The one who always slips extra blankets over his knees and pretends not to when he catches her at it.

…and now she’s somewhere in a fake forest, bleeding through a wound in her slender shin, walking on a leg that probably ought to be resting, following a stream back to a cave where two little kids are waiting for her like she hung the moon.

The television image cuts from your retreating frame, wincing and weaving through the trees, following the stream — to the collapsed bodies of Tommy, Carol and Marvel… all knocked out from their track jacker stings, in a heap of barely-alive-limbs.

Carol’s got two lumpy stings on her jaw, one on her neck and three more on her bicep.

Marvel’s got two stings on the same cheekbone, looking like the worst case of acne any boy his age has ever seen (and that’s not counting all the stings across his bare biceps, thanks to surrendering his jacket to you).

And then there’s Tommy.

Tommy’s still got that nasty sting under one eye, all swollen and puffed out. His other eye’s got the horrifically fresh, precise scar-like cut from where that robin bird came out of nowhere… just in the nick of time, before he ran away from the swarm of killer demobats — all while you crawled off to safety in the opposite direction.

All three of them are now knocked out unconscious, somewhere by the lake, under a tree’s shadow.

Burdock’s jaw works once.

Then he says, very dryly, to no one and everyone, “I’d like five uninterrupted minutes alone with that freckle-faced son of a bitch and his sword.”

Will goes very still, muscles stiffening.

Jonathan’s mouth twitches despite himself.

Joyce, saint that she is, doesn’t even miss a beat as she slyly hands over the medicine cup. “You and me both.”

“I’m serious,” Burdock says gravely.

“I know,” Joyce says, just as serious.

He takes the pills, swallows… then grimaces at the lingering chalky taste. “No, Joyce, I mean I would genuinely like to beat him to death with one of my good hardbacks.”

Will gives a little startled laugh.

There it is.

That little stupid involuntary sound that slips out at exactly the wrong time… and somehow saves everybody in the room from drowning for one blessed little second.

Burdock hears it and glances at him, his eyes gentling even while the rest of his face stays gruff… though teasing now. “What.”

Will wipes at his nose quickly. “Nothing.”

“That’s a lie, William”

“It’s just…” Will gives a helpless little shrug, still kneeling in the middle of his half-packed life. “You said hardbacks.”

“Well, I’m not wasting the paperbacks,” Burdock grumbles.

Jonathan snorts out loud.

Joyce closes her eyes briefly and exhales through her nose, smiling despite the sheen of fear still sitting behind it.

But the relief lasts for all of five seconds, because the television cuts back to you again.

This time you are limping by the stream. Hood up. Both windbreakers still on. Face pale. Mouth set.

The room goes painfully quiet… Will’s bag falls forgotten into his little lap as he sits cross-legged on the warm carpet. Jonathan’s arms fold tighter across his chest. Joyce completely goes still from where she stands just behind the couch. Burdock’s fingers curl over the armrest hard enough that the tendons in the back of his hand stand out.

Caesar’s voice keeps going. Claudius’s too. Some local Hawkins anchor on another channel the television had been bouncing between only moments ago had been saying something breathless about “the developing odds” and “the brilliance of the alliance fracture,” but none of that matters now.

All any of them can see is the way you keep stopping for breath… and then forcing yourself forward anyway.

Burdock watches you for three long seconds.

Then four.

Then says quietly, melancholy, almost to himself — “That girl of ours would drag herself through hell before she’d leave that boy behind.”

Nobody answers him.

Because nobody can.

Jonathan doesn’t look at Joyce, but he can feel her thinking the exact same thing he is.

Yeah, she would.

And Burdock knows it better than any of them.

Because he has known since you were tiny what Steve Harrington did to the architecture of your little heart. That first ridiculous crush. That impossible devotion that never actually shrank, just grew up with you… changed shape, got quieter and deeper and far more dangerous. He has watched you love Steve from a distance for so long that at this point, it’s practically one of the house ghosts.

Burdock never once mistook it for a phase.

Why would he? He was a man who had once loved that way too.

He’d loved Astrid with his whole chest. Then he watched their son love your mother, Lenore, like the world itself had invented devotion just for him. Men like that recognize it when it blooms in somebody else.

Which is exactly why Burdock sits there this morning looking like he’s trying not to come apart at the seams.

Because he knows you.

He knows damn well… you are not walking out of that arena without Steve Harrington if there is any possible way to make otherwise happen.

He also knows the rules say there can only be one winner.

And that knowledge is sitting in the room with all of them like another person.

Joyce is the one who finally cuts through it, because of course she is.

She turns from the screen, claps her hands together once, and says in that brisk, no-arguments voice she gets when the world is on fire and she has no intention of letting the flames set the schedule, “Alright. Enough. We are not going to sit here and let the television morons tell us how to have a nervous breakdown.”

Will blinks up at her.

Jonathan glances over.

Burdock huffs. “Pity. I was just beginning to enjoy mine.”

Joyce points at him with the medicine bottle. “You’re not allowed.”

“Says who.”

“Says me.”

He grumbles something beneath his breath that sounds suspiciously like oh so this is tyranny, but he takes another sip of tea anyway.

Joyce sets the bottle down and keeps going. “The rain’s only getting worse. You boys are headed clear across town—you need to go before it turns into lightning and thunder and the roads really go to hell.”

At that, the practical side of the room wakes back up.

Jonathan pushes away from the wall. “Yeah.”

Will scrambles fully to life again, grabbing up the rest of his clothes, jamming them into the overnight bag with even less coordination than before. “Right, right, okay, okay—”

“Not okay,” Jonathan says.

Will looks up.

Jonathan nods toward the mess in his lap. “You packed one shoe.”

Will looks down. “…oh.”

Burdock makes a dry sound in the back of his throat. “His mind’s elsewhere.”

“Same,” Jonathan mutters sadly, stooping to grab the missing sneaker from beneath the coffee table.

“It’s in the arena,” Will says, like it’s the most self-evident thing in the world.

Jonathan pauses for one beat with the shoe in his hand.

Then hands it over. “Yeah. Mine too.”

…and maybe that’s why Burdock softens then, just a little bit. Because the second that Will’s worry gets too big and too visible, it gives him somewhere to put his own tenderness besides fear.

He opens one arm. “C’mere, squirt.”

Will doesn’t even hesitate.

He just launches himself at the old man — so hard the blanket bunches and Burdock lets out a startled grunt before wrapping him up one-armed anyway, tucking Will close with that gruff old affection of his that always feels more solid because it isn’t dressed up.

“There we are,” Burdock murmurs, rubbing one hand over the back of Will’s head. “Nearly broke my ribs, boy.”

“Sorry.”

“No you’re not.”

Will squeezes harder.

Burdock’s voice shifts… low, steady and made to hold. “And yes, I’m keeping in touch on the walkie, alright? You keep yours on, I’ll keep mine on, and if I hear you getting too dramatic over there? I’ll come down that line and haunt you myself.”

Will laughs wetly into his shoulder. “You’re not dead.”

“Not with that attitude.”

Jonathan has to look away for a second.

Joyce doesn’t. She just watches the whole thing with her mouth pressed tight because if she lets it tremble, she’s done for.

Will finally pulls back enough to look at him. “You promise?”

“Of course I promise,” Burdock winks. “Now you go on and have some fun.”

Will makes a face. “At Steve’s?”

“Yes, at Steve’s.”

“There’s nothing to do except watch the Games.”

“Then don’t watch them every goddamn second,” Burdock says, giving his little shoulder a gentle shove. “Go outside. Touch some grass. Pick weeds. Make nuisance of yourselves. Play something. Be children.”

Will’s face folds into that sweet, wounded little Byers expression of his before a soft sigh escapes him. “We’re trying.”

Burdock’s eyes warm. “I know.”

Then Jonathan is there, crouching beside them, and Burdock’s hand leaves Will’s shoulder to grip the back of Jonathan’s neck instead for their own quick goodbye. Not theatrical or prolonged. Just one of those rough little embraces men give when too much is being said without language.

“Don’t drive like a maniac,” Burdock mutters.

Jonathan snorts. “I almost hydroplaned into a telephone pole about forty-five minutes ago, so I’ll do my best.”

Joyce whips around. “You what?”

“It was fine,” Jonathan says immediately.

“Jonathan—”

“It was fine,” he repeats, standing too fast and going for lightness because if he doesn’t, she’ll make him sit back down and explain every second of it. “The car and I had a brief disagreement with the weather. We resolved it.”

Burdock mutters, “Jesus.”

Joyce is already pushing them both toward the door. “Go. Both of you, go. Before I decide nobody’s going anywhere ever again.”

Will grabs his overnight bag. Jonathan grabs his jacket. Joyce catches both their faces on the way out — cupping one cheek, then the other, pressing kisses to forehead and temple and cheekbone in quick succession like she can armor them with contact alone.

Jonathan murmurs, “Mom.”

She ignores that.

Then she points two fingers at him. “It is not even nine in the morning. My shift is not until noon. You do not need to rush back so recklessly that you kill yourselves doing it.”

“I know.”

“You hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I mean it.”

“Mom—”

“And walkie me as soon as you make it.”

“We will,” Will promises.

She smooches his forehead once more then shoves them both out the door. “Be off.”

The door slams behind them half a second later.

Rain hits instantly.

Cold, soaking, immediate.

Jonathan throws one arm over Will’s shoulders and the two of them make a mad dash for the car hunched together like fugitives. Will is laughing and sputtering by the time that Jonathan gets the passenger door open for him, shoving the overnight bag in after him and then darting around to the trunk long enough to wedge his bicycle in place. By the time he slides behind the wheel, his hair is wet through and rain is running off the end of his nose.

He wipes at it with the back of his hand and jams the key in the ignition.

The engine coughs awake.

And before Jonathan can even shift into drive, Will has already snatched up the walkie.

“Hello? Hello? Hello? Guys?”

Static.

Then Dustin’s voice explodes through so loudly Jonathan flinches. “BYERS! OH MY GOD, FINALLY!”

Will lights up so fast it’s like somebody plugged him in. “We’re coming!”

“Well, hurry up!” “Yeah!” Lucas chimes in. “We’re already out!”

Jonathan blinks, one hand on the clutch. “Wait—what do you mean already out—? I thought you guys were at Steve’s.”

Will covers the walkie with his palm and looks over, eyes huge. “They’re not at Steve’s.”

“No kidding.”

Then Lucas cuts in over the static, repeating: “We’re already out!”

“Out where?” Jonathan stresses.

Mike answers this time, sounding just as keyed up as the rest of them are. “We’re about to rally in the streets!”

Jonathan stares straight ahead through the rain. “You’re about to what.”

Dustin clicks in. “Can Will please, please, please come?” “He has to!” Mike begs. “The party’s not full without him!”

Will lowers the walkie and turns to him with the expression of a child about to ask for something he already knows he should not be asking for. “Jonathan.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“No.”

“Please.”

“Absolutely not.”

“Please, please, please, please, please—”

Jonathan tips his head back against the seat for one full second, eyes shut, rain drumming the roof like impatient fingers. Then he looks sideways at his brother, who is all earnestness and panic and giant eyes and still somehow twelve in a world that does not deserve twelve-year-olds.

Will clasps his hands together. “Little Ro just saved Steve’s life.”

“I know he did.”

“And everybody’s already out there.”

“That part is not helping your case.”

“Please?”

Jonathan stares at him.

Will stares back.

The older brother squints. “Who’s supervising.”

“Eddie.”

“Just Eddie?”

“I think so.”

They have a little staredown — one all puppy eyes, the other hesitant.

Then Jonathan exhales through his nose and rolls his eyes so hard it ought to count as a spiritual experience. “Fine.”

Will gasps. “Really?”

“No, I’m lying for fun.”

Will practically bounces in his seat as he lifts the walkie again. “Guys! Guys, he said yes!”

Through the speaker comes an immediate collision of voices.

Dustin: “I KNEW IT.” Mike: “Told you.” Lucas: “Don’t go too far, dumbasses, they’re coming.”

Jonathan pulls the car out carefully into the road, shaking his wet hair once like a dog. “Where are we meeting?”

This time Dustin answers like he’s reporting battlefield coordinates. “Mayor Kline’s house!”

Jonathan snorts. “Of course you are.”

Will relays, “We’ll be like thirty-five minutes!”

“Maybe less if Jonathan drives like a psycho,” Mike offers.

Jonathan leans toward the walkie. “Not happening.”

Static hisses.

Then Lucas, sounding unbearably pleased with himself, says, “Coward.”

Jonathan barks out a laugh before he can help it. And that’s really the tone of the next stretch of drive: rain, windshield wipers, the old engine… Will in the passenger seat talking ninety to nothing into the walkie while Jonathan drives through gray morning roads with the smallest unwilling smile tugging at one corner of his mouth.

The boys keep talking over each other in overlapping bursts.

Dustin is convinced the whole town should celebrate what Ro did.

Mike thinks they need signs.

Lucas thinks that sounds stupid unless the signs are for a campaign.

Will keeps trying to ask where they could even get poster board this early.

Erica suddenly crackles through the line just to add, “—from the old school supply closet—obviously,” like everybody else in Hawkins is an idiot except her.

Jonathan glances at his brother, brows raised. “You’re all robbing a school before breakfast?”

Will, without shame, giggles into the walkie, “guys, are we robbing a school before breakfast?”

“It’s not robbery,” Dustin argues. “It’s repurposing.”

“Repurposing,” Jonathan repeats flatly.

“Big brother’s not happy,” Will chuckles into the walkie.

“Tell your brother to mind his damn business,” Erica snarks.

Jonathan almost drives off the road laughing.

The walkie devolves into chaos again. At one point Mike and Dustin start to bicker about whether “Shadow Boy” sounds cooler than “Ro the Brave.”

Lucas vetoes both and says they sound like rejected comic books.

Will immediately defends the latter.

Then Jonathan hears a horn through the static.

A beat later, Eddie Munson’s voice cuts in, lazy and unmistakable. “Alright— which one of you little criminals stole my walkie channel.”

Will beams. “Eddie!”

“Yeah, hi, sweetheart, it’s me, your favorite parole violation.”

Jonathan glances in the rearview mirror automatically even though he can’t see anything yet except rain blur and distant headlights.

Eddie goes on, “Just so everybody knows, I am tailing these tiny fugitives in the van because apparently I enjoy stress now.”

Over the walkie comes a chorus of protesting voices.

“We are not fugitives!” “Don’t act like this wasn’t your idea!” “Eddie, you’re such a codfish.”

Eddie guffaws over the speaker. “A what?!—”

Jonathan snorts, reaching for the walkie. “Gimme.”

Will hands it over happily, and Jonathan clicks in with a smirk as he stops at a battered stop sign. “Morning, Munson.”

They can hear the wild grin still in Eddie’s voice whenever he stops leaning into all the kids’ madness, answering him directly. “G’morning, Byers. How’s the old man doin'?”

And just like that, something softens in the tense space between Jonathan’s shoulders. Not because Eddie has said anything overtly noble. He hasn’t. Of course he doesn’t, because Eddie Munson would rather die than just sound happily earnest for too long in one breath.

But he asked.

He asked because he knows. Because everybody knows, because this is a small town (and much smaller now, thanks to apocalypse the purge) and the people left who care know where every ounce of care gets done — even if nobody stands up and applauds it.

Jonathan shifts one hand higher on the wheel. “He’s alright. Worried sick. Same as the rest of us.”

“Yeah,” Eddie says quietly. Then, lighter again: “Well, if he starts stage-diving through windows trying to get to the Capitol, tell him to wait till I can set up a proper ramp.”

Will laughs.

Jonathan does too.

And for a little while that’s enough.

They keep driving.

Rain crawls heavier down the windshield. Still no thunder. No lightning. Just the steady low-lying dread of a storm that has not decided whether it wants to get worse yet.

Eddie keeps half an eye on the kids in the back of his van in his rearview and half an eye, apparently, on the damn road — grinning, walkie in hand. At one point his voice cuts abruptly sideways with, “Mike Wheeler, if you’re standing in the back of that van without holding on? I will personally fling you into next Thursday.”

There’s a clatter.

Dustin cackles.

Lucas shouts, “I told him—!”

Will bends over laughing in the passenger seat.

Jonathan, still driving, snorts fondly into the walkie. “When will you kids ever learn, man…”

Then there’s a brief lull.

It’s enough for the rain to sound louder again. Enough for Jonathan to feel all the old nerves start trying to creep back in around the edges now that all the chatter’s dipped…

And that’s when he shifts in his seat.

Once.

Twice.

Will notices out of the corner of his eye but, because he’s Will, says nothing.

Jonathan stares out at the road. Mouths one false start. Stops. Tries again… then finally, into the walkie, with all the awkwardness of a man trying not to sound like himself, asks, “Is, uh… is Nancy there?”

Silence.

It only lasts maybe two seconds.

But in those two seconds Will goes so still beside him he might actually be trying not to smile with his whole body.

Then static crackles and Eddie answers, maddeningly normal, “Yeah, man. She’s here.” A beat. Then, with just enough casual cruelty to make the point without making it a point, adds: “Riding passenger princess.”

Jonathan’s ears go hot. “Cool,” he says, far too fast. Then slower, trying and failing to recover. “Right. Cool.”

Will looks down at his lap immediately, like it is suddenly the most fascinating object in all of Indiana.

Jonathan narrows his side-eye. “Don’t.”

Will does not look up. “I didn’t say anything.”

“You were about to.”

“I really wasn’t.”

“You were smiling.”

“That could mean anything.”

Jonathan huffs and looks back at the road. But his mouth betrays him. There is absolutely a smile there now — embarrassing and involuntary and kind of helpless.

Because yes, of course Nancy’s there.

Nancy Wheeler has been orbiting Steve Harrington since middle school in one form or another. Whatever version of together they are, whatever shape that has taken over the years, Jonathan knows better than to pretend it isn’t real.

And still.

Still some stupid soft stubborn part of him keeps loving her anyway.

“So we’ll see you soon, yeah?” Eddie clicks in again, light and easy.

Jonathan, clicking in. “Should be twenty minutes out now.”

He’s still smiling like a fool.

Will, sweetly, says nothing.

That’s the grace of him. He knows. He’s always known. But he would sooner die than make his brother feel ridiculous over it.

Over the walkie, Eddie has moved right back on to the kids without touching the Nancy thing one inch further. Another grace. Different font.

“Raincoats,” he says now. A collective groan answers him. “I’m serious.” “Boooo,” Dustin drones. “I don’t care if you boo me, Henderson, put the damn raincoat on.” “We look stupid.” “You are stupid.” “That’s not the same thing.” “Today it is,” Eddie quips, then clicks the walkie again. “Hope you’re wearing a strong raincoat, baby Byers. This rain is asssss.”

Jonathan glances at Will. “He’s right. This weather’s gross.”

Will grins, grabbing the extra little yellow rain slicker bunched near his feet. “You sound just like him.”

“That’s because I’m also right.”

“Debatable.”

“Child.”

“Old man.”

Jonathan laughs under his breath and reaches over to knock lightly against Will’s shoulder. Then, because he’s still Jonathan… and because even in the middle of all this there are some lines he was apparently born to say… he adds, “If any of you idiots catch a cold from running around in the rain, you’re grounded,” into the walkie.

Will blinks at him.

Then actually laughs. “Grounded from what?”

“Exactly,” Jonathan deadpans.

Over the walkie, Eddie barks out a laugh so sudden it fuzzes the speaker. “That is the shittiest threat I’ve ever heard, and I fully support it.”

“It still counts,” Jonathan drawls.

Mike’s voice comes in, indignant. “No it doesn’t.” Lucas, traitor that he is, clicks in and adds, “Kinda does.” Mike cuts through everybody with his usual snark: “I’m not getting grounded by anybody who doesn’t even own my house.” “Thank you,” Dustin contributes. “That’s what I’m saying.” “Both of you shut up and zip your coats,” Eddie groans.

The rain gets harder then. Not violent yet. Just thicker. Meaner. A little louder against the hood and roof. The streets ahead turn slicker — reflecting the washed-out morning sky like strips of torn metal, making the post-apocalyptic version of Hawkins just look more grim than it already was.

Jonathan keeps both hands on the wheel.

Will keeps talking with his friends.

The walkie keeps crackling.

And somewhere beneath all of it, beneath the weird hysterical relief and the worry and the rowdy affection and the fact that none of them know what the next hour will bring, there is one quiet steady truth humming through Eddie’s beat up van and Jonathan’s old car:

This little corner of Hawkins is not splitting its loyalties.

Not now. Not ever.

There is no Team Steve and Team Ren in competition.

There is only a townful of people who have decided that if the world is cruel enough to make them choose, then the world can go fuck itself.

Jonathan drives on through the rain with his little brother in the passenger seat and the bike rattling softly in the trunk and Eddie’s van somewhere out there, carrying Nancy and the other boys and all their noise. And as the road unwinds beneath the tires and the storm gathers itself one shade darker overhead, he thinks — not for the first time, and not for the last — that some people belong to each other so plainly it ought to be enough to change the rules.

It ought to.

So maybe that’s what all of Hawkins is doing now.

Not watching.

Not waiting.

Just refusing.

Refusing the terms. Refusing the odds. Refusing the corrupt idea that one heart should have to beat at the expense of the other.

Outside, the rain keeps falling. Inside the car, Will is still arguing with Dustin about poster board logistics over the walkie while Jonathan drives safe and steady and grins at the road in spite of himself. And somewhere far from Hawkins, deep inside a cursed arena built to make children bury one another, a wounded girl keeps moving and a broken boy keeps breathing.

For this little pocket of the world, that is enough reason to keep going too.

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