𝗽𝗮𝗿𝗮𝗱𝗶𝘀𝗲, steve harrington

44. RUSSIAN TRANSMISSIONS

It was almost like deja-vu, and it scared her tremendously.

But yet, she couldn't dwell on it and she was soon forcing herself up to get ready to work through the majority of the day - she was picking up a shift for Owen Larson in the afternoon - something that she couldn't let this distract her from.

As she pulled on the all-too-familiar uniform and sent a prayer to whichever god deemed her fit enough to listen to her hopes, Sadie found her eyes glancing over to her desk more often than usual. Her actions lacked the usual wish of her remaining at home to work on her projects, but rather the suspicions that now lay deep within her, something connecting Russian planes to falling magnets and effects of unease.

Maybe - and the thought made her laugh - maybe she was just suffering the after-effects of sharp hostility shared between Russia and the West in the late years of the Cold War. There was certainly enough propaganda to push her to think that way, but she really couldn't see herself as such a cynical, sceptical person. There were similarities that she could draw between herself and the cracked old man Hess (who was the now ninety-odd father of Bernand Hess and had used to run the farm before going to war and returning a shell of what he once was, spouting his opinions on the government and claimed, wholeheartedly, that a small town in the middle of fuck-knows Indiana would be exactly where the Soviet Union would deem important to attack).

Sadie wasn't a sceptic. She was too scientific for that, her beliefs too routed in biology rather than religion or theories of existence and it made utterly no sense to her to hold such disbelief in the realities of life in Hawkins. Perhaps, and she really hoped it not, it was some form of hyper-vigilance, and that truly wouldn't be unbelievable.

Whilst she had not suffered greatly, in comparison to the Byers at least, what had happened to those she loved in the past two years was traumatic, and if she had developed some PTSD symptoms then it would not be a matter of scepticism but rather a high level of vigilance. She would merely be suffering from a heightened level of awareness of changes or apophenia - the human act of finding patterns in things that aren't there. She would be seeking out potentials of danger so that she wouldn't be confronted by them and trap her within the unknown, to put it simply.

That was where she found her answer, in the paranoia that came from two years of danger in the same place. But she knew now, thanks to Hopper's ability to somehow tell that in previous months that there was some kind of hypervigilance and a supervised visit to the closed-down laboratory, that Hawkins no longer had that danger looming above it. She knew that, she was aware.

Plus, there was nothing to be remotely scared about by the sight of Dustin shovelling Frosted Flakes into his mouth as she entered the kitchen.

"Alright, alright, nobody's planning on taking them from you," Sadie warned, receiving a glare that could almost be threatening, should he not have milk dribbling from the corner of his mouth, before considering her own breakfast options and taking the box herself. "Suck it." She added, reaching for a bowl.

She poured herself out a portion and took the carton of milk beside Dustin's arm, only to shake it and only the last few drops rattled back. "Dipshit." She wrinkled her nose at him, only to get the sticking-out of a tongue back, and went to stand, moving to the fridge and pausing. "Dustin, how long have the magnets been like that?" She asked.

"Huh?" Her brother blinked, clueless. "What do you mean?"

"They're scattered all over the floor," Sadie replied. She gestured wildly at the collection of brightly coloured plastics and discarded paper of pictures and certificates alike; "the magnets."