five | well, i wonder
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〖 gasping, dying, but somehow still alive - this is the final stand of who i am, please keep me in mind 〗
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extreme trigger warning
please skip if needed
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JACOB IVES had a complicated relationship with living.
Ever since he had realised that it could end, that he didn't actually have to experience torment and tragedy every day of his life, it seemed his entire purpose had become to do just that - to end it.
He found an alternative purpose down the line, of course, and eventually even found an inclination within himself that life was worth living at the end of it all.
That had been working out for him for a while, sans the handful of depressive moments he experienced throughout the week.
It still was, partially, but that was mostly down to the fact that he didn't really hold any opinions on the matter.
He didn't have much of anything about anything, it was all happening and he was there and that was all there really was to say about it.
He had stopped leaving his room, not for any particular reason other than that it was easier then getting out of bed and doing something. He found it hard to be around people for more than a few minutes at a time on the handful of occasions his sister and Mike did persuade him to come downstairs, and he always ended up back in his room hidden under the covers blasting music on his Walkman.
He wasn't eating as much, but Mike coerced him into consuming just enough to keep him healthy, to maintain that small bit of muscle he had been so proud of before he became so tired of his own body.
It didn't work too well - like he said, he didn't really care anymore.
El rarely ever left his side even when he begged her to, and Max would often come into the room and read a comic in the corner to keep the girl company while also keeping an eye on her best friend. He tried not to pay too much attention to them, seeing Max only beginning to understand the weight of the situation was worse than seeing Will stare at him from across the room like he was going to lose him any minute.
During this period of time, Jacob made the genius decision to finally listen to Hopper's cassette, the one Joyce had given him the day she moved.
Neither Mike or El could have persuaded him out of bed that day as he lay in the darkness, contemplating the meaning of the Jim Croce song his dad had used to lull him to sleep in Murray's warehouse a lifetime ago.
Depsite how hard it was, there were lighter moments.
In those aforementioned handful of times he was urged downstairs, he managed quiet conversations with Dustin and Lucas that brought genuine smiles to his face, Will understood that conversing was a bit of a chore and that his social battery ran out very quickly so only communicated with him by passing him the other joystick for the Atari and silently challenging him to Mat Mania.
Nancy and Jonathan knew the plan of action almost as well as the Party and he was often subjected to Nancy deliberately sitting on the ground in front of him to read her book while her boyfriend discreetly exchanged the VHS in the player for movies he liked whenever he entered the room to try keep him interested and around people for longer.
Max sometimes acted out the comics she was reading for El while they were in his room and he failed to hide his amusement as his sister laughed jovially and called out an encore following each performance.
Eventually, it could even be said that he had partially improved.
Jordan only got threatened with violence a few times when he tried to lightly force the boy into taking his meds, Joyce could make eye contact with him again once he stopped glaring sullenly at the meals being placed in front of him, and on nights when Mike went barging into the upstairs bathroom at 2 in the morning with tears streaming down his face yelling at Jacob for being in there, he didn't even snap at him or tell him to get over his foolish nightmares or to leave him alone or argue about being checked for cuts anymore.
He just held him and apologised and promised that he was okay and called him baby and love and wiped his tears away, and it was all going to be fine.
It would be just like Mike said. Everything would be fine.
And everything was, until Sunday night.
It wasn't his worst night, but it was far from his best - and it was a particularly hard blow after he had been making gradual progress just to end up right back under the covers, locking out anyone but his sister.
Mike was quick to inform Max that there usually wasn't a reason when she asked what could have happened to cause the sudden drop in his improvement, but that didn't make it any easier for him to accept either.
Apparently the same went for the others, because the mood at the dinner table that night was rather dismal. The conversations were sparse and quiet - Dustin was trying to crank a few laughs from Lucas, Will and Max, Jordan was staring at his plate without eating anything, and Jonathan kept nudging him every few minutes asking if he was alright. He never got a reply.
Nancy was looking worriedly between the two brothers and occasionally at Mike himself every so often, but not saying anything.
The radio was playing softly, Joyce's attempt to lighten the mood - he instantly recognised one of Jacob's favourites from their album, The Killing Moon.
Jacob had threatened to propose to him with that song once.
The thought brought the smallest of smiles to his face as he finally lifted his fork to his mouth, a little more confident now. Jacob always hit bumps every now and then but it would all turn out okay in the end.
And then he could say those three words back like he should have the first time he heard them.
El shuffled into the kitchen just as Joyce and Nancy started to clear away, her hair pulled on top of her head clumsily and sleep still crusting her eyes. Her attire currently composed solely of her brother's clothes, today she was sporting one of Jacob's faded W.A.S.P shirts that actually belonged to Jordan.
"Hi." She mumbled tiredly, reaching into the cupboard for two plates and wincing, her limbs apparently aching from being cramped up in bed all day.
"Hey, princess," Jordan managed a feeble smile, glancing up from his full plate for the first time since he had sat down, "you feelin' okay?"
Everyone knew what he really meant.
"We're fine, he's just tried today." El sighed, placing the plates down between Max and Lucas, beginning to pile them with food, an uneasy look still on her face with every movement.
"Where's Jake?" Joyce asked, wiping a splatter of gravy off her hands with a crimson napkin as she dropped her plate by the sink and reaching over to change the station on the radio.
But she never got to turn off the pained voice of Ian McCulloch as the song reached its chorus.
"Bathroom." El muttered, and that was how it started.
It started with the plate falling from her hands, with the pained groan as she clutched her stomach, with the porcelain shattering against the tiles and a broken whisper of her brother's name.
And then they heard the loud thud from upstairs, and everything spun out of control.
Jordan and Jonathan were the first to leave the table. They ran, everyone crowding behind them as they trampled up the stairs, calling out the boy's name desperately.
The bathroom door wasn't even locked.
Jordan barged in with ease, the flimsy handle giving way under his shoulder, and froze only for a single moment at the horrific sight that greeted him before immediately launching into action, throwing orders at his brother and Nancy who followed with an airy, blank-minded kind of compliance.
Joyce was at the front of the group that pushed themselves up against the doorframe. She let out a gut-wrenching yell, clutching her youngest son to her chest as Will stared on in horror.
"Oh, God - oh, God, oh please no... please no-"
Jordan grasped the unconscious boy in his hands and shook his shoulders harshly while Jonathan foraged the medicine cabinet for something and Nancy procured an empty waste bin from somewhere. He slapped the boy's pallid cheek lightly, looking far too accustomed to dealing with situations such as these - too calm, like he had turned it all off.
"Jacob. Jay, can you hear me? I need you to look back and forth if you can hear me. Jacob."
They all saw, eventually.
Max screamed. She stumbled into a terror-stricken Lucas' arms and sobbed loudly, but he could not even move to hold her.
Dustin held a hand to his mouth, a pale shadow falling over his face. His expression was drawn tight, no gentle laugh hidden in his eyes like there always was.
El stood far away from it all, completely still, like she had stopped feeling, like she had stopped anything.
And Mike watched as the boy he loved lay in a puddle of his own vomit and blood, pale-faced and unresponsive, and he remembered the incident in the upstairs bathroom of his own house almost a year ago - he remembered thinking that he would prefer hell.
He remembered the boy's promise that he was better and it would never happen again. He remembered lying with him only yesterday knowing things would be fine, being told that they would be by the boy who was now lying there unblinking, his beautiful face splattered with sick and blood, cheeks gaunt and hollow; corspe-like.
He already looked dead.
And then the world went sideways and his ears were ringing and then it was dark, dark, dark, forever and ever, and he wished it was him instead.
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Jacob Ives had a complicated relationship with living.
Ever since he had realised that it could end, that he didn't actually have to experience torment and tragedy every day of his life, it seemed his entire purpose had become to do just that - to end it.
He found an alternative purpose down the line, of course, and eventually even found an inclination within himself that life was worth living at the end of it all.
That had been working out for him for a while now, sans the handful of depressive moments he experienced throughout the week.
It did not work well enough, apparently.
Jacob had come eye-to-eye with death more than he could count on one hand. But it had never brought him here.
He walked through the blackness for a long time. The waves used to thrash at him and pull him under without her there to keep him steady.
Now they lay still - quiet, frozen beneath his feet.
His steps didn't even echo, there was only the silence that came with finality.
So this was what the end looked like, that endless abyss he always felt like he was plummeting towards. Or maybe this was the image his brain had formed for him, maybe everyone had their own pick of the place.
If that was the case, his own brain had not really gone to any great lengths; it was just complete darkness everywhere he looked.
He didn't turn or backtrack or pause, be walked on and on without ever drawing a breath or growing tired.
It was so empty here, at the end.
But there was nothing. And that was what he had wanted.
A man appeared out of the darkness before him, sat at a vanity adorned with thick light bulbs. Jacob walked on, and the apparition drew closer.
He rose his eyes to the vanity mirror, blinking at his own expressionless face before lowering it again to the man tracing his peculiar eyes with thick eyeliner, his eyes encrusted with tiny glinting jewels. He was wearing an uncomfortable corset and fishnets that he managed to make look like an outfit, a collection of platinum wigs thrown over the arms of the vanity, the free space on the dresser taken up by jewellery, bags of suspicious pills and powders, and smaller mirrors he knew were used to help with detailing.
When they shared a room at the institution in California, the man had used a piece of the broken mirror Jacob had launched his foot through in a rage while being dragged out for a round of shock therapy to apply his mascara.
"Hey, plumb." The image greeted him casually, expertly smudging the magenta powder he was now pressing onto his eyelids, "I wasn't exceptin' you so soon."
"Hi. Where are you going?"
"Oh, nowhere. Nobody goes anywhere in here." He said, reaching closer to his reflection as he started on the other eye, "Just wantin' to look pretty, is all."
"You always look pretty."
"Sure as hell didn't at the end of it all, did I?" The man laughed genuinely, pressing too hard on his lid. His eye went red and bloodshot, but he kept pressing the powder over his damaged skin, which had bruised under his finger. "Not that you can talk. Remember what I told you about shepherds and sheep?"
"Yes."
"And which of 'em do you think you are?"
"I don't think it matters now."
"Nothing matters now. But I'll tell you anyway." The man said, scratching at the blush on his cheeks until it tore away and left a shallow cut, "You're a sheep. A sheep to your own head, to everyone else you know that's ended up here. Can you name a single one of 'em that went peaceful?"
"... They're all peaceful when it stops. Aren't they?"
"If you're second guessin', you already know the answer."
"I can't think of any."
"Did you think it'd be any different for you?"
"I was past caring at that point."
"I'm sure you were. You'll learn your lesson, though, won't you?" He asked distractedly, prodding at the large bleeding welt that had followed his finger when he lifted it from his face, "When you go back?"
"When I go back?"
"I'm here to help you find your way there. Go on, turn around. Go home, you ain't done yet."
Jacob thought about this for a moment, then looked further on to the darkness ahead, "I don't think I want to."
The man turned away from the mirror to meet his eyes and it was the face he remembered, the one that haunted him for months, the one that opened his eyes to the horrors of the world he had only recently been thrown into.
No, Jacob didn't think he would like to go back to a world like that.
"I'll be seein' you then, plumb."
Jacob walked on.
He met a few more images on the way, after lengthy treks through darkness. Sometimes they were random, sometimes they were faces he knew. He thought one of them looked very similar to his old manager from Roddy's Records, but it was hard to be definite about any of them when he didn't stop to talk to them.
One of them he did recognise made him slow, after he had passed a family of four he had seen on a true crime installment about Indiana on TV.
The woman was stubbing out a cigarette on her ankle. She was dressed in a thick cardigan pulled over her patient uniform, her raven hair in a loose ponytail and a thick bandage on her wrist.
"You run out of those stupid little reasons I told you about?" She said without looking at him, pressing the cigarette into her skin again and again until it traced out all the letters of the name inked into it.
"No. They just stopped working."
"Fair enough. How was that first Christmas of yours you were so excited about?"
"Didn't make it. But the one I just had was good. And the one before it, I guess."
"Then why are you here?"
"Don't know. Who was Leila?"
"Oh, just... just one of my stupid little reasons." She smiled, squashing the cigarette against her palm, "I'll be seeing you then, kid."
Jacob walked on.
He soon realised that some of the images he saw weren't even dead. Some of them were people he had seen around his school or around Lenora Hills, one of them was the boy who had led the tour of the academy he had been dragged to the other day. Some of them looked older than they should have, others younger, and some didn't even have faces.
One of them was a man in a navy blue suit with slicked back silver hair and a pointed face, who appeared continuously until Jacob walked through him rather than past him and he dissipated into smoke.
He could see the faint outline of the monster from Bravenpoint out of the corner of his eye as he was talking to a slighter older version of the young former roommate he had protected from said monster all those years ago.
Jacob turned in the other direction to get away from that one, the first time he had altered his course at all, and found himself falling right into fragile but solid arms.
The trembling hands fell onto his shoulders and he was pushed back to come face to face with a prematurely wrinkled, dark-haired woman that he had definitely never met but felt the strangest spark of recognition towards.
Her gaunt eyes narrowed, dark bags creasing with the action, and she stared at him fearfully as she released his shoulders, whispering a name he knew under her breath.
"Go back."
"Who are you?"
"Go back." She snapped, mouth curling into a panicked scowl, eyes wide and frantic, "Go back now. Get out of here. Go back now, go back now, GO BACK NOW-"
Her shouts followed him but grew more and more dim as he once again walked on.
He noticed that since changing his course, his mind was a lot more empty. The other images had sort of crowded him, but it was another long walk through darkness before he met the next one.
It was a man he only recognised from photographs. His aunt hadn't lied when she said Jacob took after him.
He was in his military uniform, and Jacob could just capture a glimpse of his own middle name engraved on the silver tags lying flat against his padded vest. His hair was dark and buzzed down to the scalp, matted to his head with dried blood.
His face was young but lined by war and grief, and his eyes were the only thing that really seperated their appeareance otherwise.
Jacob was nearly as tall as him now.
"Hey, Cubby." The man smiled thinly, revealing a scar that cut through his upper lip as he did so, "Didn't think we'd be meeting so soon, you know. Becky wasn't lying, you really do have those Ives eyes."
"She said you liked Lord of the Rings."
"I... I did, yeah. Me and your mom went as-"
"Frodo and Samwise for Halloween. I know. She showed me the photo." His voice sounded strange - had it been like that before? Why was he now noticing any differences? "She said you were the first person to vouch for Frodo and Sam being queers."
"Yeah, well..." The man laughed heartily, his voice growing more and more hoarse as he visually fought back tears, "At least you know I would've been supportive."
"... He would have, too. I think. Eventually."
His face faltered, smile growing sadder, "Yeah, he will be. At least you and your sister have someone. It should've been me, but... well, it didn't work out that way, did it? At least you have someone. He's a good man."
"Yes, he is."
"So you - you know-"
"Can I see you? Just a little bit."
The man - Andrew (since when did any of them have names?) smiled a little more genuine, nodding briskly. Then he lowered his head, and Jacob reached out to lay a hand in his blood-matted hair, and he saw.
Andrew learned to ride a bike when he was seven.
He had been a good kid, the kind that donated presents to a homeless family he knew on the side of town his parents didn't like him to visit and stuck up for people at recess.
He liked music, only ever asked for records for birthdays and Christmases.
He and his best friend Russell used to play in the woods by their house with large branches they had torn from trees, pretending to be soliders on the fields of the Battle of the Black Gate.
He fell in love with the first girl he ever kissed when he was sixteen, and they shared a summer of drive-thru movies and riding through town in her brother's '53 Buick Skylark before deciding they were bored of each other and going separate ways.
He and Russell celebrated graduation by ruining their parents' country club anniversary party, which they accomplished by getting so wasted they both threw up in the statuesque fountain. They ran away from the angered and abashed roars of their families to go back to the woods one last time before Russell went to law school and Andrew remained in Indiana to attend Bloomington University, where they acted out one of their childhood battles for the last time and then cried over the life they were saying goodbye to.
They promised to keep in contact and never did, and then he went to college and met the love of his life.
Stacey had insisted he attend a party with her to meet more people, apparently he was too awkward to navigate Freshman Year on his own and she disapproved greatly of Dave, a fellow student he was growing rather close with but who she thought to be a 'brainless jock living off daddy's cash'. She introduced him to her roommate, a girl with gorgeous amber eyes, and he had already drunkenly proposed to her before the night was over.
The girl had laughed, joked about him having to ask her on a date before they skipped too far ahead, and he did just that the following morning as soon as he was sober enough.
Her sister Becky was wary of him, but they had always been on relatively good terms. Until the pregnancy.
When Terry got pregnant, he was happier than he should have been. They were too young, they had only been together for a year or two, he was living off of the monthly allowance from his parents as it was, Terry couldn't take any time off college without risking the tuition her sister was paying being put to waste and he couldn't lose his studentship without being drafted which would mean having the kid raised by babysitters half the time until they graduated.
He didn't care; he loved her, and he knew they could do this together. He was going to marry her.
It was a mistake to tell his parents, but it didn't matter what they thought - he was going to be happy, find somewhere far away from all this news of the war and the coming elections to raise his family.
They were going to use the money his parents had given him to get rid of the baby to run away instead, he already had a car ready and the trunk packed with essentials for whenever they were ready to leave.
Their friends were the only ones who knew that Terry had kept the baby, and Stacey helped them deliver it in secret so that Terry wouldn't be forced to leave the university if they found out.
The day his baby girl was born was the happiest of his short life. Iris had her mother's eyes, but his nose and ears and curly hair, and she was the only thing in the world that mattered.
Which had made giving her up so much more painful.
But pregnancy had taken a toll on Terry, her dark periods were growing more and more frequent, and they were far too young. They agreed to give the child a chance at a better life, swearing to find her again one day, and that was it - his fatherhood just as short-lived as his life would turn out to be.
A year later, he and Terry watched the Moon Landing together with some friends in the apartment he and Dave funded with their parents' money, and he listened to Stacey's wacky story about the weird research study she had signed up for and backed out of that Terry agreed to take over for the spare cash.
He hadn't thought much of it, then - he knew she wasn't just doing it for the money, Terry was always looking for some way to help change the world and joining some experiment that could probably save lives or something wasn't something he planned to try talk her out of.
Andrew had gone to Woodstock with Dave and some admittedly sketchy friends of his from California, but even the proposal of a Janis Joplin show wasn't enough to pull Terry out of her new endeavour and he had to go without her. It was a great experience, best few nights of his life, and he had re-discovered his old love of Lord of the Rings on the way there - but he shouldn't have left, he should have been there, he should have convinced her to pull away before it became impossible for her to do so.
He knew there was something wrong when Terry was told her future in college completely depended on her continuing the study, that they had made it impossible for her to back out now - but she wouldn't be moved, and he knew better than to argue it too much, she was twice as stubborn as him.
And then he found out it was being run by the government, a detail she had failed to inform him off, and his resolve only hardened. But again, she would not be moved.
Terry met new friends in this increasingly suspicious government experiment. He liked them, they were peculiar and good-hearted, which he found to be the best combination in people.
They had all grown cautious about the workings of the lab and the truth of what they were involved in and he had kept a close eye on things as his girlfriend gradually became more obsessed with finding out what was going on. And then Terry came to him with the most outrageous story, of corruption and government lies and a young girl called Kali who needed their help.
He had been supportive - too fucking supportive. He had told her that he believed her and to do what she had to; how stupid had he been?
The Halloween party had been a temporary breath of relief for all of them. He liked Alice and took her on as a sister figure, even if he could tell she had a mild crush on his girlfriend she probably didn't even know about (he could see it was steadily shifting onto Gloria anyway), he found Gloria the easiest to talk to as they were both mildy-ashamed geeks, and he was intrigued by Ken, the self-proclaimed psychic of the group. He was a bit odd, but he had a kind soul and he was always there for Terry and the girls, so Andrew liked him, too.
Things were weird and skeptical for those next few months, but otherwise fine. They were fine.
And then Nixon made his address to the nation.
It had been a long few weeks of watching the love of his life and her friends be lost to the lies of the government while he did nothing, and years of watching from a screen or through newspaper clippings as people were slaughtered in their thousands - including his childhood friend Russell, who had died in prison after being charged with treason for trying to free the 'wrong innocents' from an enemy penitentiary.
Halloween masks and a protest in the dining hall was no capitol building protest like the one Dave's friends had joined during the D.C riots after Martin Luther King was shot, but it was all they could do as dumb college kids with no real say. They managed to get the entire hall in a state of uproar before the handcuffs met their wrists.
Terry used every cent in her savings to pay his bail even though she didn't need to, which was stupid of her but also only made him love her more. Because she understood that he just had to do it; she was the same in that way. Heroic fools, she would call them - an admittedly fitting title.
He was already on academic probation for skipping to go to Woodstock, but Dave had assured him that he would be given nothing but a slap on the wrist like he had. So Andrew hadn't really been that bothered about it at all.
Until the dean stripped him of his studentship, making him eligible.
The days leading up to the lottery draft had been tense. He had tried to hide his unease as best he could, but he knew Terry could see right through him. And then the day came. He remembered sitting in the apartment with his roommate, his girlfriend, and their friends, listening to Stacey drool over some politician guy who Dave was quick to remind her was old enough to be her dad. It had felt like the night of the Moon Landing, but with no celebration or round of beers to congratulate humankind on its advancement.
Just the surreal feeling of being in one of the nightmares he had been waking from all that week, of hearing his birthday be the first date picked out of the entire draft.
Dave had cried, Stacey and Alice had no idea what to say - and he had hid his own terror. He had played it off, told Terry to appreciate the time they had.
He went back to where they had left Iris the next night - he just wanted to see her once, before he left. But she was no longer there, she had most likely been moved to one of the facilities that handled the care for young babies, but there was really no way of knowing if his daughter was even still alive.
Terry had just known, somehow, that he would do it. She had been waiting at the apartment when he got back, told him that she had already tried, and they just held each other and cried for a long time, mourning the life it seemed they were never going to have.
They had their last Christmas together a month later.
And then his mother convinced him he was being selfish by staying in Bloomington for Terry, that he needed to spend the last few weeks before the draft back home, and he had agreed.
He had lost so much time with her. Time he would never be able to get back.
He went for his physical. Deployment was inevitable at that point, but it wasn't until the night Ken visited that the reality of it truly set in, when he told him it didn't look like Andrew would be coming back.
Saying goodbye to Terry had felt like tearing a part of himself off his own body. It was the hardest thing he had ever done, convincing her to leave him, to go on a break until he came back - it hurt knowing he had to it with the knowledge that there was a good chance he wouldn't come back.
But she agreed, she agreed for him, because it was what he wanted. Which made it all the more hard to leave her.
Ken promised to do what he could to take care of her, to make sure she would be okay whatever happened. That was all Andrew could ask for.
He was deployed a week later.
And he never returned.
Jacob was surprised to find that his eyes were rather warm when he withdrew, Andrew straightening up again, crying freely.
"I never knew... I never knew we'd gotten a second chance. If I had known - I promise you, I would've been there. I would've been there for you all..."
"Not your fault." Jacob managed to say, dabbing at the corner of his eye and frowning when it came away wet with tears. Since when could he feel again? "He rigged it - Brenner. He rigged an entire Selective Service System draft just to get you out of the way. You must've pissed him off somehow. Look at that, two things in common already, we'll be all caught up in no time."
Andrew laughed. Jacob realised he had actually told a joke, and that was unusual too.
"Well, three, I guess," He went on, more because he had to say it out loud to remind himself than for comedic effect, "we're both dead."
"Oh - you're not dead, Cubby." Andrew shook his head at him sadly, slowing stepping away, and he noticed that he was now wearing a normal shirt and jeans and was completely uninjured, his hair curly and long, framing his face the way he knew Terry liked, "Not yet. That's one thing I can help with, at least. Tell him I said thanks for taking care of our kids whenever you see him, okay?"
"Tell who?"
But Andrew was gone in a waft of smoke, and the question went unanswered.
Jacob stood there for a while staring at the space he had stood in, then turned to find the darkness disrupted by a tiny moth-eaten cot, like the ones he had just seen flashes of in Andrew's brief memories of the war before the memories ceased.
He heard a disgruntled sigh from somewhere outside of himself and took a slow step closer, watching a man slowly come into view.
Then the man turned.
Jim Hopper had never looked more like the war veteran he was.
His face was lined and toughened, hair buzzed down to his scalp, small cuts littering his face and his knuckles were busted and his skin a pallid grey, eyes heavy and ghostly until the skin above them creased the tiniest bit and they slowly rose.
"... Jake?"
Jacob's eyes were warm again, he didn't know when that had happened.
He reached out, and so did the image, but this image felt tough and calloused and more real than any other. And he could feel him.
He could fucking feel him.
The man's hand furled around his own, shaking now, and Jacob drew his first breath, chest rising and falling heavily.
Hopper stared at him, eyes watering now, and just as Jacob was about to speak-
Just as he was about to utter the word 'Dad?'-
Just as he was about to step closer-
It was all torn away from him by a sudden flash of burning white light.
And Jacob was gone.
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Jordan was arguing with the secretary at the front desk for the fifth time and making no more progress than he had prior to his current attempt. The waiting room had grown dark after a few hours, but the fluorescent lights revealed her attempts to hide her frustration with him and also made it nearly impossible for Lucas and Max to remain sleeping.
Dustin and Will were on the other side of the room, talking quietly with Jonathan and coughing out false laughs every now and then. Jonathan's hands were shaking, a smoker's twitch, and he kept tucking them into his pockets to try and hide it from Nancy, but she had been staring at the stack of magasines in front of her for a while now and seemed determined not to take her eye off them.
Joyce had gone to the bathroom a while ago and not returned. She had done that a total of twelve times since they arrived.
There was panicked footfall from the end of the hall, and within a few seconds Steve and Mack were falling through the double doors, a single hurriedly-packed rucksack hanging off each of their shoulders. They both looked a mess, but everyone in that waiting room did, so there was no room to judge - especially considering the fact that they had just suffered through a nearly 4 hour plane ride Steve had purchased them tickets for from the last of his savings a half hour after Nancy had called.
Jordan finally stepped away from the desk to accept the frantic embrace Mack pulled him into, her running mascara long since dried into the skin of her cheeks.
She pulled away, reaching up to wipe away her friend's own tears as Steve slowly shuffled over to Dustin and the others.
"Where is he?"
"Recovery." Jordan said shakily, sitting down on a chair far away from the rest of them. He hadn't stopped alternating between hitting things, sobbing, or shaking since the nurses took the boy out of his hands. "They won't let us in to see him without proof of guardianship, but I don't have anything with me."
"The hell they won't!" Mack growled, marching right up to the desk Jordan had just backed away from and exchanging very low but fear-inspiring words with the secretary, who was looking a lot less irritated now.
Mike didn't react to the scene, merely blinked and went back to staring at the stack of magazines on the waiting room table like his sister - she was onto something, it really did help turn it all off for a while.
He had woken up on a gurney connected to an IV drip with a bump on the back of his head and a mouth like cotton three hours ago.
A nurse had appeared with a warm smile and a quiet, 'Ah, you're awake,' and had refused to answer any of his rasped questions until he had drank every last drop of the cool glass of water she gave him.
Lucas had slinked in soon after, hands in his pockets and eyes bloodshot, and forced out an update on their friend through a trembling mouth, and they had remained in silence while they both tried not to let the tears fall.
The nurse had escorted him to the waiting room once his vision stopped blurring and he had been sitting there ever since, El clinging to his shirt with blank eyes, closing them tight every few seconds and clutching at her stomach or chest with a quiet sob until she eventually passed out, releasing troubled sounds every now and then but not stirring.
There had been a flatline from one of the operating rooms a while ago.
Jordan had screamed and kicked and yelled and shoved at every nurse and doctor that tried to stop him from forcing his way into the operating theatre until one of the student surgeons came out to inform him that unless his brother was a middle-aged woman booked in for a heart bypass, he could relax.
And then the next one followed ten minutes later, and the same student surgeon walked out with an ashen face and quietly informed them that they had resuscitated him and he would be fine, though with an uncertainty that urged Nancy to guide Jordan's swaying form into one of the metal chairs. They hadn't needed the student surgeon to tell them anything, El had seized up and gone completely rigid for a total of fifteen minutes before he even approached them and hadn't uttered a single word since.
Joyce returned with coffees and teas a while later, her eyes no less puffy and bloodshot than before she walked off, and Mack took turns coddling either her or Jordan while they all waited for an update.
"As soon as he's stable, they'll let us in." She kept saying, but it didn't really do anything to help.
Steve came over to to talk to him after Joyce and Jonathan had forced most of the others into the car to bring them home, but Mike remained unresponsive and he slinked off to talk to Jordan instead.
Before he knew it, he had fallen asleep - and he woke up the next day at noon, alone in the guest room bed.
For a moment, he thought perhaps it had been a terrible enactment of his usual nightmares about the night he found Jacob in the bath. But he couldn't hear the shower running, or the sound of everyone clammering around making breakfast downstairs, and Jacob's modified Walkman was still left carelessly on the dresser.
Mike let the silence and the sudden emptiness of the room sit heavily on his shoulders for a while, and then reluctantly made his way downstairs to ask Jordan to take him back to the hospital.
↬
The next few days passed quickly.
Mike and Jordan went back to the recovery ward everyday, sometimes accompanied by the others but not always - on a few occasions, it was just them and the silence.
El never came with them, not even when they returned to the house one night to inform everyone that Jacob was conscious and recovering better than expected. She never left her room anymore, and the only people permitted entry were Max and Joyce, though even they could barely scrape a few words out of her.
Jacob officially woke after two days, but he was still unresponsive to the happenings around him and was usually sedated for a while as soon as the nurse took away his food, which usually consisted of porridge or blended foods that were easier for him to keep down after having his stomach pumped.
The doctor, Dr. Fahrsa, was unable to pinpoint whether this unresponsiveness was due to his brain still recovering, or if it was simply an emotional trauma response. He assured them that Jacob would come around in another day or two, but strongly recommended looking into mental health facilities either way.
Will brought Silas along one day. Mike didn't talk to him, he hadn't really been talking to anyone lately, and Jordan made no comment when the pair of them climbed into the backseat of his car.
He watched Silas carefully as they entered the room, analysing his reaction for any sign that he was disturbed or put off. Because this was the truth, this was what being friends with Jacob Ives meant. And if he couldn't handle it, Mike would very much like if the boy would just butt out of their lives already and let Jacob's real friends take care of things.
But he didn't even flinch. He stared at him, dead-looking and having his pulse monitored by two different machines, and he just looked sad.
Will couldn't manage more than a few minutes in the room without either getting angry or becoming distraught, and Silas followed him out without a single word.
New Years was a dismal affair compared to the year before.
They were all supposed to be back by then but they refused to leave their friend's side and, even though many of their parents were furious and demanded them to come home, any roads or flights out of California had veen cancelled or shut down due to the blizzards.
Joyce and Dustin alone were tackling the attempt to raise everyone's spirits and had gathered them all in the living room to watch the ball drop on TV, distributing broken noise makers and paper crowns to everyone and playing loud music as they raised their bottles of root beer to 1986.
It seemed everyone had made the simultaneous decision to just spend the night acting as though all was right in the world, which Mike admired but not enough for him to be able to bear more than a few minutes of Max, Will and Lucas jumping around wildly with Jonathan and Nancy or of Joyce and Dustin coaxing small smiles from a sorrowful El. He retreated outside quietly, hoping he had managed to get away unseen.
He sat down on the raised step leading into the back garden with Jacob's Walkman in hand, replaying the tape in it over and over. He had adopted the habit of carrying it around with him everywhere - it was Jacob's most beloved possesion, he couldn't let any harm come to it.
And it was kind of like having a piece of him everywhere he went.
He spent hours listening to the songs Jacob had been blaring in his ears only days before... before it happened, analysing and understanding, trying to find the message in the lyrics the boy was always telling him about that Mike had never been good at deciphering.
Jordan came out to join him a while later, when Mike's hands were already pained and numb from the cold as he pressed the rewind button for the third time. He didn't really look at him, but he could see from the corner of his eye that he was still sticking to the non-alcoholic stuff.
But he didn't speak. Neither of them did.
They just sat there and watched the fireworks, and Jordan was generous enough to pretend he hadn't seen Mike crying.
The morning after, they made their usual visit to the hospital.
Mike always brought the Walkman along with the intention to give it to Jacob, but never quite worked up the nerve. He needed that piece of him, he needed something to hold onto when he left the cold halls of the hospital to return to that empty guest room.
But they had barely even taken off their jackets when Jordan's persistent attempts to urge a conversation out of his bleary-eyed, recently woken brother was cut off by the entrance of Dr. Fahrsa and the nurse that usually accompanied him, Sofía.
"Oh, I didn't know you guys were here yet - sorry, but you're gonna have to wait a while, I have to do Jacob's evaluation for the day." Dr. Fahrsa informed them gently, motioning towards the door while his assistant made quick work of cleaning away the half-eaten breakfast left on the tray by the bed, "It shouldn't take long, feel free to visit our cafetaria while you wait."
"Thanks." Jordan replied automatically, leading the way out.
Mike glanced back to try and meet Jacob's eye, but was surprised to see him alert and in quiet conversation with Sofía, sitting himself up against the pillows and nodding wearily in response to something she asked him.
The door shut before Mike could gape at the sight any longer, and he reluctantly dragged himself after Jordan's hunched form towards the cafetaria.
Not a single word was passed between them on the way there or as they took their seats in the waiting room, Jordan sipping half-heartedly at his coffee and Mike having already drained his on the walk back.
He glanced around at the few other people gathered in the waiting area - small families and lonesome elderly people, a fair-haired kid his age wearing the uniform of the academy Nancy had dragged Jacob to only last week.
He wondered who they were all waiting on.
An older nurse he had seen around a few times approached, the people around them bracing themselves and glancing up hopefully as she peered around the room.
"Jacob Hopper? Is there any family here for Jacob Hopper?"
Mike startled at the sound of the boy's government name, his heart stalling as Jordan stood quickly to meet her across the room. The nurse faltered a bit when she saw how young he was but steadied herself, keeping her voice low and exchanging a few quiet words with him.
Jordan gave a solemn nod after a while, and she ducked back down the hallway.
Mike waited, pulse drumming in his ears as Jordan slowly made his way back over to where they were sitting. He sat down, and held his head in his hand for a long time before seeming to remember that he wasn't alone and clearing his throat, not meeting Mike's eyes when he spoke.
"They're releasing him tonight."
And he knew then why Jordan had reacted that way.
Because they should have been happy to hear that.
↬
a/n :
all the info abt andrew and the fellowship (terry, gloria, alice, and ken) is from the novel suspicious minds by gwenda bond - idk if it's been confirmed as canon yet but it's brilliant for anyone interested in learning more abt terry's backstory and i love the fellowship sm, their characters are all so loveable and it shows how fucking insane brenner really is and it's just a really interesting read okay-
i am so sorry for anything jacob's attempt might have caused any of you to feel, but it is the reality of mental illness and my main goal is to bring that reality to light through this story. he was never going to be magically cured and it's important for ppl to see how it effects everyone involved and how quickly someone can go from completely fine to wanting to take their own life, mental illness is never a simple thing
and this book will only be getting heavier from here so please for the love of god please just stop reading if it's too much for you, i do not want anyone triggering or upsetting themselves, your safety is top priority.
- georgia