"Seraphina. Ser. What the fuck is wrong with you. SER!"
I wake up to someone shaking my shoulder.
"Huh?" I slowly open my eyes and groan.
My head is pounding.
Am I dying?
I can't die. If I die, Billy might die.
"Seraphina what's wrong with you?" Billy asks.
"Go...back...to bed." I say.
"You just appeared out of thin air." Says Billy. "Is this a trick? Are you one of them?" He asks accusingly before I can speak.
"Billy." I close my eyes to try and stop the world from spinning.
"I'm still connected to it am I? Or is this a dream? Ser answer me!" I feel his hand on my arm but I feel like my arm is a million miles away from the rest of my body.
I need food and water and all these things I don't have the energy to get. I think, although my thoughts are interrupted frequently by waves of pain and nausea.
"Blue serum in the bathroom." I croak. "Billy please. A shot."
"Ser you're not making sense." He says.
"There's a blue serum in the bathroom, it's in a syringe. Grab it...bring it." I whisper, eyes closed.
"Ser you're scaring me." He says.
I find the energy to hit him with my hand. "I think I'm dying can you go find it NOW!"
I groan as a big wave of pain hits me. Shouldn't have done that.
I think I hear Billy get up and go but I'm not sure until there is an absence of incessant questions.
I just try to roll with the pain. Hurry up!
I finally hear Billy again. "I found it."
"Stick me." I say.
"Where?" He asks.
"Side of my...neck." I whimper.
"Okay." I hear Billy rustle and feel a sting where Billy gets me.
I whimper slightly and feel him pull the needle out.
"What does that do?" He asks.
"Shh." I try to focus on my breathing, slowly the pain goes away.
Finally, I can open my eyes. I can see Billy. I can hear clearly, without any incessant ringing in my ears.
I try to sit up, and the spots return so I stop and try every couple of minutes. After a few attempts, I manage to pull myself up so I lean up against the wall. I look to Billy and he looks...afraid.
"What are you?" He asks.
"I'm not one of those shadow things." I tell him.
Billy leans back against the bed and asks coldly. "Then what are you?"
I sigh.
"You saw that gross monster, and all that crazy shit right? You know that crazy shit can happen in our world?" I ask.
"Yeah, yeah." He says, brow furrowed.
"You know Hawkins Lab?"
"Yeah where they leaked that chemical?"
"Yeah."
I take a deep breath. I'm not really scared about him believing me because I can prove it but I'm scared that he'll be scared of me or something.
To be fair, if anyone will be okay with me, it'll be Billy. I trust him, I know we were just juniors in high school, but I trusted him then. And things have changed now. He nearly died. The time for normal is over.
"Well they did human experimentation. And I'm still trying to figure out all the details but I was raised in Hawkins lab. That's where I got this from. It was my name, Seven." I hold out my arm and show him my Seven tattoo. "That's how I saved you, I can blink. It's like magical powers, I guess."
"What?" Billy asks. "Hold up. Am I hearing you right? Magical...powers? You can blink? What does that mean?"
"Yes. Teleportation technically but I call it the blink. It's how I just appeared out of thin air."
"That's crazy." Says Billy. "I have to be dreaming still."
"You're not dreaming."
"You've always been able to do this?"
"Yep."
"Where did you go just then, when you teleported?" Billy asks.
"Billy, I went back to Hawkins."
"What do you mean BACK?" Billy looks around the room.
"We're in Cali." I say softy.
Billy looks at the floor.
"I had to know we were as far away from that thing as possible." I say.
Billy doesn't say anything, he just watches me with that intense expression of his.
"I went back to Hawkins because wanted to make sure that thing was gone, and it was. I don't know what happened to it but it's gone." I say.
"I know. I don't feel it anymore." He says.
"Your sister, Max, she's okay." I tell him.
Billy breathes a sigh of relief. "Thank goodness. Thank you Ser."
Our eyes meet and we hold each others' gaze. Billy ends up looking away and I close my eyes, feeling the last waves of pain from my overexertion.
"Billy?"
"Yes."
"Why'd you move? Was it because of me?" I purse my lips. I've been wanting this answer for so long.
"No." Billy exhales loudly through his nose. "Some thugs from school gave Maxine a good scare and she told her mom and her mom told my dad and he moved us away from everything."
I nod.
So it wasn't because of me.
"Did you move on?" I whisper.
"What?" He asks, and he sits up.
"Did you move on?" I ask again, louder.
He is quiet for a second and then responds with "tried to" and a shrug.
A part of me thinks that 'tried to' is too vague and answer and a part of me knows exactly what it means. I nod.
"Did you?" He asks me.
I think back to the many quick flings I've had, most of them ending with me making away with something expensive.
"Tried to." I tell him.
"Where did you go?" Billy asks next.
"Je suis allé en France." I whisper.
"France, huh?"
"I went to France." I say, putting emphasis on the words he didn't catch.
"Better than shithole Indiana." He says and I chuckle. There's a moment of awkward silence where we both look away and then Billy looks at me with sudden suspicion.
"What?" I ask him.
"Something doesn't add up."
"A lot of things don't add up." I pick at my nails.
"No, something doesn't add up with your story. You say you're from Hawkins but you told me when we first met that you're from London. And you have an accent too, so how can you be from here and London?"
"Billy." I look at him intensely. "I escaped from the lab when I was almost six and went to London. I lived there for seven years, which is how I picked up the accent."
"Oh." He says.
"This guy named Tom found me on the streets of London and he was the closest thing to a father I've ever had." I continue slowly.
Billy looks at me intensely. "Was?"
"Yeah. He died when I was thirteen. He was shot in our apartment. I blinked in from an errand and I found the barrel of a gun pointed at my face." I say.
Billy doesn't say anything, he looks kind of uncomfortable.
"It was a long time ago." I say.
Billy looks around the room. "Tom." He says slowly.
I tip my head to the side. He looks at me with something like pity.
"You told me you never wanted to talk about our families." He says, almost cautiously.
"That's right." I tell him.
"It's because you lived by yourself didn't you?" Billy asks.
I look away. "How'd you figure it out?"
"Oh, I saw you signing Tom's names on all your papers, I assumed that he was like my father, and wasn't good. But you say he died when you were thirteen...so..."
"Figured it out." I pick at my nails again.
"Where are you parents? Where's your family?" Billy asks.
I shrug. "I don't remember them. Lab rat, remember?"
"I don't know how many times I've wished for my father to be gone, but..." Billy sighs. "Why didn't you tell me Ser?"
I shrug. "There was a lot you didn't tell me either. Like how those bruises you always had weren't just from fights with other kids."
"How'd you figure that out?" Billy's body tenses.
"You were saying all kinds of things yesterday on the pain medication." I tell him.
Billy looks away, annoyed. "You shouldn't know about that. That's none of your business."
"Billy..." I say softly.
"Don't Billy me." He stands up and wobbles, but he steadies himself with the bed. I try to jump up as well but I feel dizzy, and make myself sit back down.
"I told you all about my shit!" I tell him. "Why is it that big of a deal that I know yours?"
"Because I have way more shit than you!" Billy is starting to raise his voice.
"Try me!" I try to stand up again, but I fall. Billy rushes over.
"Are you okay?"
"Fuck off." I have tears in my eyes.
"Jeez Ser," Billy sighs and helps me up onto the bed. He rubs above his brow with his hand.
"Okay." He says.
I look at him expectantly.
"Yes, sometimes my father throws me around a little bit. I hate him for it Ser, I really do. But fighting back makes it so much worse." Billy grits his teeth.
I look at him sadly. "What about your mom?" I ask him.
"Who knows where my mom is. When I was younger and things got bad with my dad, Neil, she ran. She ran and she said she would come back for me but she never did. Honestly, I don't blame her. I thought Neil was going to kill her at times." I see Billy start to tear up but he blinks a couple of times and takes a deep breath, and the tears go away as if they were never there in the first place.
"I used to try and fight him back, but he was bigger than me and I never could. I never could protect her. After she left I just realized it was easier to stop fighting him, and he'd do less damage."
"And then your dad remarried..." I say quietly, wondering where Max comes into the picture..
"Married Susan." He says the name with a sneer. "And I got a brand new little sister and my dad expected me to accept them as my 'new family.'"
There's the little skater girl.
"What's wrong with Susan?" I remember how nice she was when she came to pick Max up, how thankful she was that I 'pulled' her daughter out of the way of the car.
"She has no idea what she's in for. Well, I mean she does but she won't do anything about it. It's only a matter of time before he turns on her." Billy rolls his eyes and digs his nails into his palms.
"I'm so sorry Billy." I look at the ground.
"To be honest I'm kind of used to it." Billy says. "My father has his ways, and he has them for a reason."
"Billy that's not right." I look at him, shocked.
Billy shrugs. "Whatever. He thinks I'm dead now anyways. He's got his perfect little family that he's always wanted and he'll forget about me soon enough."
"Billy."
"It's true."
We sit in silence on the bed.
"What do we do now?" I ask, mostly to myself.
Billy shrugs.
"We could go to France." He says.
I punch his shoulder gently, barely using any force. "You have to get better first."
"Yeah." He looks into my eyes. "I guess so."