Null woke to the sound of a monitor beeping. As she tried to open her eyes to see where she was, she quickly found that she couldn't open her eyes. She relied on her touch next, feeling slightly propped up on an uncomfortable bed...a cot, possibly.
She felt lackadaisical in her movements, groaning as she tried lifting her arm, and by extension, moving her wrists.
Footsteps drew nearer, and Null panicked. It'd been a while since she'd felt like this, a while since Hawkins lab.
"Relax, love," a familiar voice reassured, sitting down next to her and removing some of the needles that were in her arm. "I just need to clean some of the blood off your eyes. I've seen your nose bleed, but your ears and eyes bleeding really freaked me out if I'm being honest."
"Alex?" Null croaked, laughing a bit in amazement before wincing in pain.
"That's what they call me," Alex confirmed. "You might want to take it easy though for now. I'd hoped you'd sleep longer but you never really were one for doing what you should do, right?"
Null cleared her throat. "Right."
"Alright, you should be able to open them now," Alex instructed.
Null opened her eyes to a painfully bright room, courtesy of the fluorescent lights hanging above her. The room wasn't too large, about the size of a master bedroom, though there were 4 hospital beds set up, her and Eddie occupying 2 of them. The beeping she'd heard was from his heart monitor machine.
"Where are we?" Null asked Alex.
"A bunker. But that's a long story. I'm more concerned about yours," he replied.
"How did you pick me up-"
"Null. Not now," he quieted her. "I need to know what happened so we can treat the injuries."
"We?" Null asked.
"Yes. Me and Darcy," he explained, causing null to look around the room for her.
"Is she here?"
"Not yet. Soon though, I expect. Now about those injuries?" He inquired once more.
"Well that's kind of a long story," Null groaned.
"But a necessary one," Alex countered.
She sighed. "Basically we were in an alternate dimension of our worlds with monsters and shit, and me and Eddie were fighting bats until they attacked him. He bled out and actually died, but I was able to convince his mind that he wasn't actually dead, which restarted his heart."
Alex nodded as if deep in thought. "I'm assuming that's the short version?" Null nodded in response. "Well then yeah I could see how it'd be a long story. What about your injuries?"
"Well we were trying to bike away from said bats but then my bike hit a pothole, so I got launched off it-"
"Breaking your wrist as you tried to break your fall and scraping the fuck out of your knee bone," Alex finished.
"Knee bone?" Null questioned.
"You can't see it?" He asked.
Null shook her head. Alex gestured towards her knee, which sure enough, had a bit of visible bone showing. Null immediately looked away, trying not to puke.
"Well," Alex stood up and straightened out his shirt which had wrinkled as he sat down next to null. "You look like shit. So when Darcy gets here, I'll have her help you get cleaned up, and then we can do some much needed catching up."
Null nodded, watching him leave the room before turning her attention to Eddie. He'd been cleaned up. He was now barefoot, shirtless, laying down in a pair of pajama pants. His abdomen was bandaged up, though it seemed some blood had seemed through the bandage, staining it red.
Her gaze finally settled on his beautiful features, face void of any emotion. It was rare for him, and nulls heart ached for all the moments she'd actually been lucky enough to see him smile.
"What is so important that you had to practically drag me out of work for-" Null heard Darcy complain, closing in on the room she and eddie lay, before stopping dead in her tracks.
"Hi," null smiled weakly.
"What the hell happened to you?" Darcy asked, a mixture of emotions clouding her features. Anger, guilt, joy, sadness.
"Just that. Hell," null responded.
Alex spoke up from behind Darcy. "She has a broken wrist and two severely fucked up knees. He's comatose, with some flesh wounds."
Darcy looked away from Null, acknowledging Eddie for the first time. "Does he need anything right away?"
"No," Alex responded. "He should be good for now."
"Okay good," Darcy breathed. "Because I can't stand to look at this version of null."
"What version?" Null questioned.
"You'll see," Darcy promised, helping Alex get her into a wheelchair, and wheeling her towards the nearest bathroom.
Null gasped at the sight of herself. Alex had really only cleaned her eyes. There was dried blood everywhere, some she was sure wasn't even hers. Her hair was matted to her head with the blood that flowed out of her ears, and her clothes that Alex hadn't changed her out of, were completely destroyed beyond recognition. She was never going to get the stains out of her clothes.
"Hope you weren't too attached to these clothes," Darcy says before cutting them off.
"Isn't this, like, overkill?" Null asks. "I think I can take off my own shirt."
"Sure, why don't you go ahead and pull it off with one good hand," Darcy dared. "That's what I thought. And I know for a fact you're not gonna wanna bend your knees."
Darcy filled up the large bathtub with lukewarm water, cleaning nulls hair and upper body first. Null was dreading the knees, and for good reason, as null found out. Null grimaced in pain as she no longer had the adrenaline in her system to avoid the pain.
As Darcy was satisfied with her work, she dressed null in a hospital gown, wrapping her knees, before she wheeled null back over the the hospital bed, giving her a choice.
"So, good news and bad news," Darcy announced. "Which do you want to hear first?"
"Bad news first, always," null replied without hesitation, glancing at eddie. She was sure he'd be smiling if he was awake.
"Well bad news is we'll have to reset your wrist. It's not in the correct position to heal so... it's gonna be pretty painful."
"Great," null groaned. "Good news?"
"The good news is that I took off of work, so you'll have an actual doctor watching over the two of you for free, no questions asked."
Null nodded. She supposed it was more than she could've wished for. When she'd made the call on her walkie, she'd hoped the gang she used to run with would at least help her out, get Eddie to a hospital. That's all she wanted out of it. But somehow both her and Eddie were getting looked after, for free, by her old family.
Alex walked in, looking at Darcy for confirmation that she'd given null the bad news. Darcy nodded, and Alex approached null. "Alright so this is gonna hurt, a lot, I'm not going to try to downplay it. So how about we just do it on three."
Null shook her head in agreement. "On three."
Alex picked up her hand, taking a deep breath as if he were about to start counting, before he reset it right then in there.
Null screamed in pain. "I THOUGHT WE AGREED ON FUCKING THREE!"
"Well then you'd have been expecting it. It's less painful without the anticipation of pain," Alex promised.
"Fucking hell," null groaned.
Darcy was beginning to set up the cast, before Alex injected Null with something while she was distracted.
"What the hell was that for?" Null asked, groggily.
"You'll thank me later," he replied.
~~~~~
The next morning Null woke to breakfast in bed.
"Hey there superhero," Alex greeted, inches from nulls face, startling her.
"Jesus Christ dude," null jumped a bit, though not much, due to her current state.
"I told you to cut that shit out, Alex," Darcy scolded.
Alex rolled his eyes. "Yeah whatever. Anyways Null, eat up. After breakfast you're gonna tell us everything that's happened from the time you left to now, and we'll return the favor. Then I'll give you a tour of the place."
Null simply rubbed her eyes, forgetting that one of her hands was in a cast, and knocking herself in the face with the plaster, hurting both her eye and making her wrist sting. "Fuck."
Alex left the room, as Darcy stayed to watch null eat. It turned out to be quite the struggle for null, since she was right handed and that was the wrist that was broken. She stabbed wryly at her scrambled eggs, though on countless attempts she picked up no egg, ultimately doubling the time it took her to eat. Darcy offered to feed null, but naturally null refused, finding to too embarrassing.
After they'd finally finished breakfast and Darcy made a mental note to make food that would be easier for her to eat, they joined Alex in what appeared to be a barely used living room.
Null divulged her entire story, all the insignificant details included, because she could never tell a story without getting off track on a somewhat related but not directly related note. And then Alex and Darcy started their stories.
"Well by the time you left, I'd already started college," Darcy started. "So I guess all that's really happened with me is that now I've graduated with a bachelors and am taking some time to work and earn money before spending more money for a masters."
"And I tried the whole college thing, but I dropped out. I dunno, you see something as cool as someone with literal superpowers, and a mundane life just doesn't seem like enough," Alex shrugged.
"You shouldn't have given a normal life away, though. I wish everyday that I wasn't a lab rat, that I could have a normal life," Null replied.
"Eh. What's normal? Besides, I hear normals overrated," Alex smiled. "Anyways, I remembered the name of that gang you ran with for a while, and I remember you saying they weren't half bad since you had leverage on them. But you also literally told both of us everything that had ever gone on there, giving me leverage too. So I made them hire me as an emergency pilot driver."
"So you're always on the same station my walkie was on?" Null asked.
"Pretty much. I think the gang is pretty scared of you, so when I offered to join in case you have an emergency, they were all on board. Then you never called, but there were other people who'd made the same deal as you, who'd been in need of emergency transport. Eventually I just started to take the jobs for the money, and that's how this place kind of came to be."
"Everything he learned about patching people up came from me, by the way," Darcy added.
"Yes of course. How could I forget?" Alex replied. "Anyways this place pretty much runs off the same shit as hoppers cabin. Generators for electricity, a well for water. It's pretty off the grid."
"Huh. Well what about the tour?" Null asked, desperate to see actual light, and not just the light that came from the lamps. There wasn't a single window in the place. It made her feel slightly unnerved.
The bunker wasn't so big all in all. There were about 10 small rooms, one that Alex occupied at all times, one that Darcy had her stuff in. One of the rooms was the living room, another was the hospital room. One was a storage room of weapons and canned and processed food, one was a computer room or office space for Alex when he did all his underground hacking and other stuff he couldn't disclose. One room was a kitchen. The rest of the rooms were open as guest bedrooms.
They took null to see the outside, which was just a large garage which held 2 helicopters and an ATV. There were no access roads, and the place was hidden fairly well by trees.
"What are you paranoid that the governments gonna come after you or something?" Null asked.
"Nah," Alex shrugged. "Just like my privacy."
"And where are we exactly?" Null asked.
Darcy laughed. "Germany of course, where else did you think we'd be?"
~~~~~
A/n: and that's how this part of the story is going to end for now. Of course I have yet to edit this story, which will include some major tweaking, but I expect we'll pick up on this point. Eddie's and Null are in Germany. Eddie's in a coma, nulls injured, and everyone in Hawkins most likely suspects them dead.
I'll be doing a lot of editing soon, so the story might be worth rereading with all the tweaks I have planned. Like shocker, I plan on saving Chrissy, which will change the story a ton because then eddie and null won't be in hiding together, so they don't bond as easily. Don't get me wrong, I love their dynamic now, but I feel like null could've done more with her powers for Chrissy.
Xoxo,
Lee