⚠️: character death, gore, jazzercise, and small mentions of El having a panic attack [will include markers]
📝: the character death and gore is a flashback from last season cause apparently making us watch Bob die once wasn't enough 🥲 also sorry the code cracking scene was so bad, it was kinda hard to write
❓: favorite quote [ST or Cosmic]?
||𝟑𝐑𝐃 𝐏𝐄𝐑𝐒𝐎𝐍 𝐏𝐎𝐕||
It hadn't taken long to get El ready for her next trip to the void. El found a spot on the ground, dry enough to sit, and began constructing a familiar device with goggles and duct tape they had miraculously found laying around. El had been kicking herself for leaving her headband at home, she should have known she'd need it. But this would do. And it reminded her of her conversation with Joyce that night; the first time someone had helped her through her fears of the void. Y/n and Max got to work behind her, turning on each of the showers to create the white noise El needed.
When they had finished, they took a seat on either side of their friend who now sat before the photo. Drawing in a deep breath, she placed the goggles over her face and began her search.
It was cold and lonely like it always was. Again, she tried to remind herself her friends were with her but it did little to lull the growing fears of what she might find next.
A mailbox was her only clue this time. It wasn't too far away, but the way it stood alone in the distance, waiting for her, unsettled her somehow. Maybe that was just the void, but that felt like a lie she kept trying to tell herself to get through it all.
It bore the numbers 1438, and it was sprinkled in rain. When she finally reached it, she carefully reached out her hand. She could almost feel the tin under her fingertips when suddenly a crimson smoke manifested out of thin air just feet away. It didn't take long for the smoke to build and the picture to form.
"What do you see?" Max asked, after some time.
"A door," El answered, her voice obstructed from the goggles over her nose. "A red door,"
It sat there, waiting for her to move. El knew she had to, and when she did that awful feeling in her gut grew stronger. Her heart pounded against her ribcage as she reached for the handle, and it took all she had not to waver as it slowly swung open.
El's frown grew at the sight waiting for her on the other side. A ways away sat a bright white bathtub. She wasn't at all eager to find out what was inside, but when she did, she wished she could say she was surprised.
Ice. Just ice.
Just like with Billy, but the ice hadn't melted yet. The tub was almost overflowing with it and-
El jumped back when a girl shot up from within so suddenly. It was Heather. She was pink-faced and trembling, but something told El it wasn't from the cold. The droplets of water covering her face had easily disguised the tears slipping down her face, and the look in her glassy eyes was pleading up at her.
"Help me," she sobbed.
El didn't have time to react before Heather was pulled violently back under. El shrieked, immediately diving after her only to be met with the watery floor. She was panting for breath, trying so desperately to calm her racing heart but she realized she didn't have time to. Heather was still there, in need of her help and she was quickly disappearing under the water that separated them.
El cried out to her, desperate to reach her but something was stopping her. She could scream and claw at the surface of water separating them, but by the time she found a way to duck her head and arm in after her, it was too late. El watched helplessly in horror as Heather was pulled into the deep black abyss of her watery grave, crying out for help.
"NO!"
■■■■■■■■■■■■■
El threw the goggles off her head in an instant, her shoulders heaving as she gulped down breaths of air.
"What happened?" Max asks immediately, her hand flying to El's shoulder for comfort. "El!"
El didn't answer. With a haunted look in her eyes, she gaped between her friends. Worried, to say the least, Max and Y/n looked to one another afraid as she buries her head in her hands. El didn't say a word and instead collapsed into shaky sobs as she tried to come down.
Y/n recognized the panic attack, and in an instant she had thrown herself to the floor beside El, laying her hand on her back and began rubbing soothing circles.
"Hey, you're okay. You're okay. Take my hand," She whispers, carefully taking El's left hand in her own. She knew it was a good sign when El squeezed back, despite her heaving breaths. It was a sign she was responding. "We're here, it's okay. Just breath. Deep breaths, in and out,"
El's breathing barely slowed, but Y/n kept encouraging her. As they found themselves doing more and more, Max and Y/n lock eyes, their faces horror-stricken for their friend. El doesn't notice. She merely squeezed Y/n's hand tighter and allowed the sobs to come.
■■■■■■■■■■■■■
⊹ ⊹ ⊹
HAWKINS NATIONAL LABORATORY
Once a place thriving with life and secret agency was now a desolate wasteland; a grave for rot and chaos that lay untouched for months.
RESTRICTED AREA
NO TRESPASSING
U.S. GOVERNMENT
PROPERTY
The sign once erected on the outer gates now lay dented and scuffed among the mud and rain, forgotten like the rest of the laboratory.
Hoppers truck comes to a screeching halt outside the lab's doors. Grabbing their bolt cutters and flashlights, Joyce and Hopper make their way to the abandoned laboratory that had caused them so much pain.
Joyce couldn't shake the feeling something was wrong. She knew it was silly to be so worried about faulty magnets, but she didn't regret her actions. The last two times she had this unshakeable feeling in her core, she had been right to listen. The first being the moment she found Will's bed empty on the morning of November 7th, 1983. The second being Halloween night, the following year. And each time she felt it, untold horrors had followed.
And now? So far, those instincts hadn't failed her yet.
One visit to Scott Clarke about the town's sudden faulty magnets and her doubts were confirmed. And according to him, the only way an unstable electromagnetic field big enough to reach over all of Hawkins would have cost billions of dollars, and likely government-funded.
This had the lab written all over it. This had to do with the Upside Down and those monsters with it. It just had to. And she wasn't about to sit around and wait for it take her boy again. Or anybody else for that matter.
So here she was, nothing but a flashlight in hand and a fierce determination in her as she stormed the gates of Hawkins Lab, Hopper in toe.
The lab was just as they had left it that night. Glass was shattered among the floors from the busted windows, the chill seeping in from all sides; still as sharp as it was that night.
"Hello? Anybody home?"
The only answer the duo receives is the echo of Hopper's voice bouncing back to them as they step inside.
"We come in peace."
As she stood here now, Joyce realized everything was as she had last left it. That is... all but one thing.
One person.
Bob Newby. Superhero.
《•••》
He stood, the warmest of smiles gracing his face as he looked at the woman he loved. She was safe.
The next thing he felt was a harsh thud in his spine and skull as he was thrown to the floor.
All he knew was fear as he stared death in the face; its haunches in the air and its faceless head peeled away to reveal several rows of sharp thorny teeth as it pinned the man to the floors.
Joyce jumps back at the sight, her horrified screams blending with his own. The creature towers over Bob, and despite the man's best efforts he cannot quite match the beast's strength. It raises a single lean arm into the air, and in one swift motion its talons glide down to meet his left kidney. As its claws sink further into his sides, a cloud of deep crimson stains his scrubs, and a guttural cry of pain tears from deep within his chest.
"No!"
Joyce's cries of anguish alert the chief, who comes in all too late. He draws his rifle, now more in tune with the weapon without a still unconscious Will over his shoulder. But even then, it is far too late when the bullets hit the thing attacking Bob. Life has already begun to drain from the man, and in a matter of seconds, his chest had been torn to shreds.
"No!" She cries, fighting against Hopper's grip, unable to tear her teary eyes away from Bob.
"Go!"
As she is pulled around the corner, her one free arm stretches out after the man who had risked so much.
"Bob!"
The last thing she sees before the scene disappears from her view altogether is Bob's trembling and bloody hand reaching out for her in his remaining moments.
"No!"
《•••》
"Joyce,"
Her eyes are far away and haunted when she finally looks at Hopper. It looked to him as if she was pulling herself out of a memory, and he didn't have to wonder which. Hopper had a hunch this would happen, but he was in no place to blame her.
"You okay?" He asks.
But she was already burying it. Again, something he anticipated.
"I'm fine," she says quickly.
"You wanna wait in the car?"
Joyce all but scoffed and marched ahead.
"I said I'm fine."
⊹ ⊹ ⊹
Hours. They had been at this. For hours. At least... Well, that's what it felt like to Steve and Dustin as they continued their search.
Really it had only been a little over one.
Spycraft could be pretty boring, they quickly realized.
Their mission was beginning to feel a bit silly as the longer time wore on. After all, what were the odds they'd find an actual evil Russian waltzing around in broad daylight?
"Target acquired," Dustin gasped.
Okay, so maybe the odds were pretty decent.
"Where?"
"Ten o'clock. Sam Goody's,"
"Give me that," Steve says, taking hold of the binoculars.
Sure enough, just as Dustin had said, a towering man in shades, long blonde hair, was carrying a duffle bag as he strode through the crowd.
"Shit. Duffle bag,"
Lowering the binoculars, the duo look to one another with grave faces as it dawns on them.
-"Evil Russian"
He wasn't at all hard to spot in their sudden chase. His all-black jumpsuit stood out among the sea of neon around him as he ascended the escalator.
Despite his casted looks at his surroundings, the man didn't seem to notice the two boys close on his tail.
"Slow down," Dustin warned, as they squeezed through a group of girls.
"We're losin' him,"
"You're getting too close,"
Steve's shoulder suddenly collided with a guy not much older than him, who turned to scowl at him.
"Watch it, dickwad!"
The target slowed, peering curiously over his shoulder. Steve and Dustin fall back against the wall; Steve behind a plant that didn't exactly hide him or his bright blue uniform and Dustin ran for the payphone. He picked it up, immediately speaking into it in a monotone voice he would cringe at later.
"Hello. Yes. I am fine. How are you?"
But he didn't seem to notice, the target had already moved on. He seemed to be in a hurry.
When they were certain he had no reason to spot them, they fell back into a scurry on his tail which carried them all the way to...
Jazzercise?
Peering around the corner, Steve and Dustin watched bewildered as the man hurried to the front of the class.
"All right, everyone, listen up!" He yells.
Their minds raced as he threw the duffle bag onto the counter with an impressive thud before pulling back the zipper.
"I just have one question for you."
What evil did this man have in mind for this poor, unsuspecting group of women?
"Who..."
He rips his glasses off, and reaches into the duffle bag-
"is ready to sweat?"
-and pulls out a boombox.
Simultaneously, their faces fall into small 'o's as they gape at the unexpected turn of events.
The ladies clad in neon tights and leg warmers bounce happily on their mats, and a chorus of agreements ring out throughout the class.
"That's right!" Cheers the non-Russian. With a blindingly white smile, he presses play on the boombox and Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go begins to burst from the speakers. Stepping onto a mat of his own, he unzips his black jumpsuit - which they now realized was a tracksuit - to reveal an equally neon, dangerously thin, muscle tee. "Okay! Let's start nice and easy now."
A grimace falls over Steve and Dustin as they watch the sight unfold.
"Let's move our thighs. Yeah!"
The women cheer as he begins to grind the air.
"Yeah, ladies, warm it up."
They begin to copy his motions.
"Bring it down to your hips. Start feeling that burn, everywhere, down in the loins, right?"
Steve just blinks.
"Slow now. Just isolate."
The man begins thrusting his hips, and Dustin watches horrified.
Okay, so maybe this mission wouldn't be so easy.
But if they were going to find anything, he was sure it would be easier to handle than this.
⊹ ⊹ ⊹
"The week is long," Robin mutters. "The silver cat feeds when blue meets yellow in the west. A trip to China sounds nice if you tread lightly."
She takes a thoughtful sip of her soda, eyes raking over her notepad with the now fully translated message. Turns out, translation went a lot faster without those idiots trying to help. But something was still nagging at her.
"Tread lightly," she mumbles, discarding her drink and beginning to thumb through the translation book.
Had she gotten it wrong? She didn't think she had, but why else would it be bothering her?
She was pulled from her thoughts at the sudden sound of knocking on the back door. In a haste, she unhooks the headphones from her neck and squeezes through the partition window before yanking open the back door.
"Delivery for you,"
"Thank you," she says, grabbing for the package.
It was heavy, but that was to be expected. It must be the new shipment in from Michigan, she thought. With a huff, she drops it onto the break table before turning back to the waiting delivery man.
She scratched her signature in before handing the pen and clipboard back, and that's when her eyes linger on his uniform.
LYNX TRANSPORTATION
That nagging feeling was back, but more than anything it felt like an itch had finally been scratched.
It couldn't be, could it?
"Have a nice day,"
"Yeah, you too," she mumbles.
She could hear the wheels of his hand truck carrying down the hall and that's when Robin peered out after him.
A hint of a smirk grew on her face when she laid eyes on the insignia painted over the back of his uniform.
"Silver cat." She gasps. "Silver. Cat."
⊹ ⊹ ⊹
"Hey, Robin, you're not gonna believe who Dustin thought was a Russian," Steve grumbled as they strode back into Scoops Ahoy.
Dustin shoved his arm.
"You did too."
"No, I did not!"
"Yes, you did!"
"No, I did not."
But Robin wasn't listening. She had shoved herself right past them without so much as a glance in their direction.
Out of breath in exhilaration, Robin finds herself on the ledge of the topiary in the very heart of Starcourt. Her eyes scoured the shops and she can feel everything falling into place.
"A trip to China sounds nice," she mutters. "A trip to China... sounds... nice..."
If Lynx Transportation was the Silver Cat, something in this mall - a store in this mall - then that meant...
Imperial Panda.
Her grin returns.
"A trip to China sounds nice."
She checks her notes again.
'If you tread lightly'
It had to be something with shoes...
How about Kauffman shoes?
"If you tread lightly,"
Now blue and yellow... what could that be - where had she seen that?
"When blue meets yellow..."
Her eyes fly across the walls, and for a moment she wonders if it's somewhere deeper in the mall out of sight. But that didn't make sense. What did make sense were the two clock hands at the center of the mall she had glanced at almost every hour of every shift.
"in the west."
"Robin?"
Steve and Dustin reach her side, peering up at her with a questioning look.
"What are you doing?"
"I cracked it," is all she can say.
"Cracked what?"
No longer able to contain her excitement, she jumped down from the ledge and her lips split into a small, shaky smile.
"I cracked the code."
⊹ ⊹ ⊹
Stepping through the airlock doors that separated the world from the gate to the Upside Down was not as daunting as it once had been.
For one, the airlock obviously was no longer functioning, nor was anything else in the building and above all, it all felt... empty. It looked more like an abandoned hospital than a notoriously evil government lab dedicated to the study of alternate dimensions and psychic child weapons.
And what once had been a gaping hole that lowered into a stories-high rift to another dimension was now just a slab of fresh concrete. The gate, and any way of reaching it, had long since been sealed.
Hopper gives a definitive, hollow knock on the plaster when they reach the wall, and turns to Joyce, "Nobody's home," and paces away.
"All the cavities have been filled. I watched 'em do it, Joyce."
At the very least, it was hard to swallow. For so long the truth had always led back here. Everything led back here.
The mind flayer, the demodogs. Will himself.
How could this not be the lab? Or at the very least, the Upside Down?
"It's over," Hopper concludes, seemingly reading her thoughts. Sharing a collective sigh with Joyce, Hopper looks around at the remains as she takes a seat on a nearby lift. "It's over,"
"I feel like I'm looking my mind," she says.
"You're not losing your mind," Hopper assures, nervously beginning to pace. "Not any more than I am."
He nibbles on the inside of his cheek as he nervously kicks a loose piece of rubble.
"You know, the other day, I almost shot Betsy Payne's dog because it came rushing at me from behind this fence, and I... I swear to God I thought it was one of those things."
The look in Joyce's eyes was all too familiar. It was a look he knew he had been wearing as long as she had
"You know that I'm keeping a close eye on things, right?"
"Yeah,"
"Because it is important to me." Hopper all but chokes. "It is important to me that you feel safe. That you and your family feel safe. I want you to feel like this can still be your home."
Joyce winces.
"What?" He asks somberly, already knowing the answer. "You didn't think I'd find out about that? Gary called me. He's said he's fixing up your house to put on the market."
Joyce makes no effort to deny his claims and Hopper realizes he never really expected her to. He didn't know what he was expecting. But the Byers leaving Hawkins was something he considered unthinkable.
And knowing that family, he wasn't the only one who'd miss them.
"The kids know yet?"
Joyce doesn't say a word, but it's all the answer he needed. The look on her face says it all; she didn't want to. She was afraid to. But she was also afraid to be in Hawkins. Afraid for her boys being in Hawkins.
And Hopper knew that feeling all too well.
"After Sarah..." he sighs, taking a seat on the ground beside her. "I had to get away... I had to get the hell out of that place, you know? Outrun those, uh... those memories, I guess."
Hopper tries to summon the words but they were having a hard time through the lump in his throat. There wasn't a day that went by he didn't think about his little girl. About what life would have been like had she still been around, how she and El would get along... All of it. But that wasn't the truth, and he knew it.
"I mean, why do you think I ended up back in this shithole?"
Eyes brimming with tears, Hopper peers up at the woman who had wormed her way into his heart all those years ago. She let out a pathetic chuckle, as he did and all he can do is smile weakly up at her.
"But you have something that I never had. You have people that know what you've been through. You have people that care about you. Right here. In Hawkins."
"You mean," she begins, her voice soft and cracked. "You mean, people like Scott Clarke?"
There's a painful silence that Joyce finally puts out of its misery.
"That was a joke," she smiled.
Hopper releases a sharp breath, his eyes fluttering closed in relief and her smile widens just a little further.
"Mm," he groans softly, giving a small laugh.
Lost in the moment and each other's company, they had nearly forgotten where they were had it not been for the sudden clang echoing down the nearby halls.
· · ─────── ·𖥸· ─────── · ·
AAIP Mental Health Association:
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Black Trans Lives Matter Carrd:
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The Okra Project:
"The Okra Project is a collective that seeks to address the global crisis faced by Black Trans people by bringing home cooked, healthy, and culturally specific meals and resources to Black Trans People wherever we can reach them."
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