Love Is A Battlefield (A Stranger Things/Steve Harrington Fanfiction)

Chapter Eighty-Five: Something is Here

It was a park in New York City. Not Central Park, of course. Dad and mom both detested tourists, so they insisted on taking us to one of the smaller, lesser-known parks in the city.

I felt a wave of unexpected tears spring to my eyes as a couple of little girls ran past us, their hands intertwined. The smaller of the two was Sara, who was younger than me by four years...it would've made her a year older than Dustin today. Her hair was tied up in pigtails, secured with the same deep blue hair band that now rested in the palm of my hand.

Standing beside her, laughing excitedly was an eleven-year-old me. Even then, I wasn't one for girly things. While Sara was wearing a dress and tights, topped off with her favorite coat to combat the chilly October weather, I was dressed in a thick sweater that was about two sizes too big for me, and a pair of worn out, tattered blue jeans. I wore beaten up converse on my feet, every available space filled with marker doodles.

"Is that you?" Steve questioned. I nodded slowly.

"So your powers are more than just the ability to see other people's memories," Dustin thought aloud, "You can show us your memories too."

"Its Troll's favorite food, Princess!" Dad growled, picking Sara off of the ground and pretending to eat her.

"No! Put her down, Troll!" I screamed, picking a stick up off of the ground and holding it out in front of me like a sword. Steve smiled, blissfully unaware of what would happen next.

"Even as a little kid you were taking on Monsters." He said, shooting me an amused look. It fell when he realized that my eyes were locked on the scene in front of me, my face frozen in a stern expression as the tears in my eyes threatened to fall.

"No Daddy, no! No Daddy!" Sara screamed gleefully.

"Roasted Princes with Paprika and Gravy!" He growled, continuing to pretend to eat her. 

I lifted my stick again, preparing to say something else when suddenly Sara's laughter stopped. My mother came up beside us and Dad stopped playing as Sara looked straight ahead, suddenly gasping for breath.

"Sara?" I asked, letting the stick fall from my hand. I bit my lip as the tears finally rolled down my cheeks, reaching up and wiping them away as quickly as they'd appeared.

"Whoa, hey," Dad asked, "Hey, are you alright?"

"What's going on?" Mom asked, putting a hand on her leg. "What happened?"

"I don't know, I don't know."

"Daddy, is she ok?" I questioned as he sat her down on a nearby rock. She was looking around rapidly with wide eyes, her breathing coming out ragged and squeaky. I sat down beside her, rubbing her back.

"You alright? Whoa, whoa, whoa, relax, relax. Honey, honey. Honey, just breathe. Breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe, breathe. In and out, slow, slow, slow."

Sara looked over at the kid version of me, and I mimed what Dad was saying, using my hand to signal inhales and exhales.

"You're ok, Sara." I told her.

The park faded away then, quickly being replaced with a hospital room a few months later. Sara's beautiful blonde hair was gone, and My Dad and I were squeezed into the bed on either side of her. I had my arms wrapped around her, and she had her head on my shoulder as Dad had an arm around us both, a book open in his lap.

"Her hair," I said quietly, my voice wavering, "I remember how much she cried when it had started to fall out. She loved wearing pigtails ever since my Dad read her the book Pipi Longstocking when she was younger, so the idea that she wouldn't' be able to do that anymore was devastating to her." I looked down at the hair band in my hand again, glancing up to see the very same one, along with its partner, wrapped around my father's wrist. "Dad promised that he'd always keep them on him, so that when she got better, the very second her hair grew back, she could be Pipi Longstocking again."